When to Rebuild? A Cautionary Tale ft. LA, Prague, D.C., Helsinki, London, and Warsaw (And Maybe YOU Next)

[Victor 11,114]

The teams missing the playoffs in S97 are in most cases a familiar sight in recent seasons, with Los Angeles, D.C., and Helsinki all making it 4-5 straight seasons outside of the playoffs. London is quickly catching up to the pack, while Prague, although a wildcard team thanks to the lopsided nature of the European Conference, is also a non-playoff contender for all intents and purposes. Worse yet, the end is not immediately in sight for any of their rebuilds, the root cause in many cases being the fact that the team overstretched during their last contending cycle. Deciding when to start competing is a difficult decision for GMs but arguably the most difficult is when to call it a day, especially if you haven't won the championship yet or you have a loyal group of players you don't want to split up. Leaving it too late does however have serious repercussions as these cautionary tales show.

 

---
 

Los Angeles

In Season 90, the Stars finally made it to the Continental Cup finals for the first time in franchise history. While it was an underwhelming end as they got swept by Prague, only in their second final themselves, it was easily the happiest period in the Stars' history so far. There was definitely enough fuel for another run too, and Los Angeles fell just short of a repeat trip in S91, losing to Toronto in the conference finals.

 

That's where GM Zack Gagnon should have drawn the line. Three of LA's top five forwards – Todd Cooke, Napoleon Dynamite, and Jon Webber Jr – were heading into their final seasons in S92, as was franchise goaltender Art Vandelay and top defenceman Elias Lampi, who was younger than the rest but chose to make S92 his last. Two other forwards, Sunglasses Joyo and Larry Abass Jr, only had one more season left beyond that. With former third overall pick Callum Murray having already retired after S90, now was the time to rebuild. An ageing team wasn't getting any better, they'd given the Stars their best seasons yet, and the best reward would have been to use that as a springboard to an even more successful rebuild.

 

Instead they did nothing. Gagnon acquired a 3rd and 4th defenceman (giving up a 1st round pick in the process) but otherwise watched as LA predictably didn't match previous performances and went out of the playoffs in five games, a timid last run for some of the franchise's best ever players. As a result, the Stars had very few assets to trade to jumpstart their rebuild, and had to try to get creative by moving all their draft capital into the S94 draft. This backfired after top prospects went inactive or retired early, diluting an already shallow prospect pool, causing some of the remaining ones, like Pombo, to ask for opportunities elsewhere, resulting in a mini-firesale and a restart of the rebuild in S96.

 

Wally Lose and Roger Eagles are all that remain from the first attempt to rebuild, with one of LA's three notable prospects (two LaFleurs and Mikko Tuomala) being a goalie who will have to leave or force Eagles to leave in due course. In effect therefore the Stars have 3 skaters and a goaltender to build around and are without their own first-round pick in S98, a guaranteed top 4 selection. Teams have climbed out of big holes in the past but it feels like this could all have been avoided if Gagnon had removed sentiment from the equation and made the cold decision to blow it up back in S92.

 

Helsinki

This story mirrors LA's very closely to begin with. In S91, the Titans make their return to the finals for the first time since S77. Although a first championship since S66 eludes them, it's a welcome return to the biggest stage for the proud historic franchise which had endured a difficult run of just one playoff appearance in 11 seasons. With the core largely intact, Helsinki goes again in S92 but this time falls short at the conference finals stage. This is no cause for concern like for the Stars though – no, the Titans' best players still have at least 2-3 seasons to give.

 

Something goes wrong in S93 though. Despite sticking with more or less the same roster other than the retirement of future Hall of Famer Pierre Emile Bouchard, the Titans quickly lose ground in a highly competitive European Conference. GM Mickey Dickson makes the brave decision, in the context of this article, of selling their three best players – forward Daryl Dixon, defenceman Kronchy Kardashian, and goaltender Fuukka Rask. You would think this is commendable given that it's the exact opposite of what LA did, by realising when their time was up and cashing in the assets. But was Helsinki's time up and did they get the most out of their trades? Dixon and Rask went on to win the cup immediately with Seattle, with another strong run in their final season in S94. The Titans got two late first-round picks back for Kardashian and Dixon, which turned into depth forwards Maple Dogwood and Bret Weier, and very little of value at all from trading Rask. With the market so weak could they have been better off sticking it out and going all in either at the trade deadline or in the off-season?

 

I think ultimately Helsinki's prolonged rebuild now is the result of continuously poor selling, for example prioritising getting role players like Mikko Borisyuk and Bryce Woodworth instead of high end picks, which meant low returns on other assets such as Owen Lazaro and YaBoi Oven. As a result, it's been a sputtering start to building anew, with a GM change in between and high-profile prospect Ahsoka Tano asking out. The Titans are finally in a position to start drafting lots of reinforcements which will have to be their way out. Given how long it's taken them to get to this point, maybe they would have been better off being competitive for a bit longer.

 

D.C. and Warsaw

So I've taken issue with Los Angeles not rebuilding early enough and with Helsinki going too soon in the wrong market. Both those views I held even without the benefit of hindsight. Sometimes, on the other hand, rebuilds start exactly when they should. I don't have particular points of note for either D.C. or Warsaw for example. The Dragons won a relatively unexpected Continental Cup in S92 and it made sense to try for a repeat with the same roster minus long-time forward Jason. After S93 ended in a conference finals exit, management realised their time was up especially with goalie Henry Tucker Jr retiring, and promptly traded the remainder of the core – Mark Calaway, The Frenchman, and Vincent Laroche-Gagnier. The rebuild has still taken its time, as it was a small and ageing core to sell off to begin with, followed by a GM change, but with some good players in the system already and lots of draft capital, the Dragons seem a lot closer to contention than others.

 

I didn't mention the Predators at all in the introduction as they aren't on a long playoff drought, although given they didn't make it out of the wildcard for 4 straight seasons, they are technically 10 seasons removed from their last proper playoff series. Their problems stem from back then though, when new GM Cole Pearce tried to unsuccessfully extend the S84 cup winners' window. Once that backfired and hamstrung the ensuing rebuild, the revolving door of 1st round picks traded for veteran goaltenders (Clueless Wallob, Lachlan Summers, and Merome Dilson) was probably the best course of action – staying competitive for the small core that existed in the hope of an underdog run, until blowing it up later. Warsaw finally pulled the plug in S96 and got very good returns for loyalists King Kisslinger, Thor Reingaard, and Maxim Anisimov, as well as unexpected rental Olober Syko. In the end the Predators may end up finally reliving their glory years faster than some of their fellow strugglers.

 

London

The United were probably less successful than the Stars until Jacob Carson took over as GM in S88, got them to the wildcard round, then let Jesse Teno win playoff round after playoff round all the way to a franchise first Continental Cup. London wouldn't miss the playoffs with Carson in charge and nearly crowned his reign with two more championships if it wasn't for Game 7 losses in the finals of both S92 and S93. This would have been a logical end point – so nearly a historic dynasty, but nonetheless a run of unprecedented success for the United. Teno retired after S93, long-time captain Molly the Cat was already gone after S92, while the third face of the franchise, Leonard Triller, had one season left, as did the team's next best player, Wann Kerr. When LA was faced with the same decision at the start of S92, sentimentality overpowered reason I think in part because they still hadn't won anything. For London though, there wasn't much more to gain from S94 that the team hadn't already achieved.

 

Instead, they persevered one more time, perhaps in part because it was to be Carson's last season in charge. Merome Dilson was brought in to replace Teno, with Laroche-Gagnier also joining from D.C. for his last season. Unfortunately, the last hurrah ended like they so often do – in a tame first-round exit – and the incoming GM was left with two assets after four of London's top 5 forwards retired: Dilson and retiring defenceman Jack Jeckler.

 

I think London has actually run the rebuild so far as best as possible with the limited draft picks they've had to work with (managing to flip Dilson to Warsaw for a first to replace yet another retired legend in Summers certainly helped). Like LA's a few seasons back though, it is hugely dependent on not making mistakes and no unforeseen circumstances like retirements, inactivity, or trade requests to derail the whole effort. Had it been started a season earlier after S93, there would have been more wiggle room and probably a slightly brighter outlook now, and they'd still have had the incredible run the team managed to go on from S88 onwards.

 

Prague

Finally, the Phantoms. They had one of the strangest competitive cycles last time around with a run to the finals in S86 followed by a season out of the playoffs, before finally winning their first championship in S90 at LA's expense, then surprisingly missing the playoffs again in S91. By this point the leaders of the team all came from the S85 draft so they all had two seasons left to play – Hall of Famer and franchise center John Jameson, his reliable linemate Nikolas Kauppi, and goaltender and S90 playoff MVP Matt Murdock. Like the Stars and like the United, Prague needed to make a decision on when they were getting diminishing returns and start rebuilding, thankful for the best run in franchise history. Instead they persevered with the old core and ended up winning just two playoff games in the trio's last two seasons, S92 and S93.

 

For the most part the Phantoms simply stood pat other than one damaging trade which saw a future second overall pick traded for one season of Skor McFleury at the start of S93 – probably down to the inexperience of rookie GM Leonard Kinnard. McFleury being a pending free agent at the end of the season made the start of the ensuing rebuild even more difficult than the retirements of Jameson, Kauppi, and Murdock, so it's been a slow build back up since. Like in the Stars' and Titans' examples above, bleak futures resulted in the necessity of trading prime prospects, in Prague's case Lazlo Holmes last season, but at least it did get them LA's first-round pick in S98 which makes up for the fact Prague's own first won't be a lottery pick.

 

---
 

All in all there's a clear theme. Los Angeles, London, and Prague all hung on to championship hopes for at least a season longer than they should have, and have been struggling ever since, with no clear path back to the top just yet. D.C. and Warsaw chose to rebuild at the right time and will likely be rewarded with an earlier return to contention, even if they started rebuilding later than some of their peers. As for Helsinki, maybe they went too far to the other extreme and blew it up with no long-term benefit, but if anything they are the exception that proves the rule. And while current contenders may feel comfortable enough that these are other teams' problems, they are very good cautionary tales and ones that currently competitive teams such as Riga, Malmo, and Toronto may well need to heed sooner than later.

[Gustav 6,546]

I’m fine with the “do nothing” strategy for the sake of keeping things competitive for a group of players who cares about the team; it’s serving them well at least. 
 

What I don’t like is doing nothing for the sake of not wanting to do anything and then quitting when everyone disappears. Davos coming up on a rebuild was a contributing factor to my leaving, but I made sure there were still sellable assets when I left and left the choice to tank up to someone new. I think it wouldn’t have been very nice to leave behind literally nothing to work with, and that seems to be getting more common in recent seasons. 
 

I do wonder whether thinner draft classes are locking teams in to the bottom of the league—if you can really only get 1-ish quality player per draft, it’s going to take so long to build up a roster that you probably won’t be able to retain those initial assets long enough. Case in point, I never asked to be moved out of Prague but that was most of the reason why it happened. So I think our next big drive (whenever that is) could really start to shake things up again. 

[Victor 11,114]

4 minutes ago, Gustav said:

I do wonder whether thinner draft classes are locking teams in to the bottom of the league

Certainly a possibility. But related to that is I think some GMs haven't adapted to that reality and think you can continue getting 7-8 season competitive cycles, and retooling on the fly, which I'm not sure is possible anymore (unless you're Moscow and Seattle apparently although even then, they have had a couple tanking seasons recently).

 

Back in the day (when every draft was 1 round deep), it was an accepted truth that you competed for 4-5 seasons, then blew it up and got as many picks as you could. Hence the awful non-playoff rosters and disparity and lack of playoff race... which is kind of where we ended up now anyway.

 

So yes, recruitment remains the actual way out of this because otherwise some of these teams are years away from being in a final again.

[eaglesfan036 4,607]

Sounds like we need to bring back #ProjectPlayer2

[Spartan 4,619]

You're much nicer than I'd have been if I wrote this. "Buying too soon/selling too early" are what I'd have called blatant mismanagement and shitty trading, along with the "sitting pat" equaling a GM being too lazy to engage players in a rebuild and they slowly all go IA or decline to stick around. Maybe it's hard in this era to expect 16 GMs to be able to run teams at high levels, especially sitting through tough rebuilds. But it doesn't seem like rebuilders even focus on the success of young players since they all seem to go IA or try to join a different team.

[rory 1,969]

6 hours ago, Spartan said:

You're much nicer than I'd have been if I wrote this. "Buying too soon/selling too early" are what I'd have called blatant mismanagement and shitty trading, along with the "sitting pat" equaling a GM being too lazy to engage players in a rebuild and they slowly all go IA or decline to stick around. Maybe it's hard in this era to expect 16 GMs to be able to run teams at high levels, especially sitting through tough rebuilds. But it doesn't seem like rebuilders even focus on the success of young players since they all seem to go IA or try to join a different team.

It's been time to fire GMs for bein shit about ~15 seasons ago

[JCarson 786]

This is a great article, purely opinion so it doesn't define anything, but it does give a perspective on the teams and how taking a different course of action might have ended with a different result.  I like the fact that it kept to a hockey analysis and wasn't a direct attack on the GM's as individuals.  The comments tend to lead to the question of GM quality and should that indicate a reason to fire, similar to a real hockey franchise.  I have suggested before that GM's should be evaluated, based on all aspects of their job (retention, locker room activity, trading, drafting, free agency, etc.  However I do believe there is one area where immediate termination should exist, ability to follow rules.  With rule following we shouldn't be seeing repeated offenses (even on use of back up goalies) and team punishments (reduced draft odds, loss of picks) season after season. There comes a point where this has to stop.

 

Article gets a 9 out of 10, again just my opinion so it doesn't mean anything.