One of the many reasons teardown rebuilds are (mostly) unpopular with both fans and management is that the normal markers for success become unimportant.
Wins, standings points and playoff series all go out the window when your organization is oriented toward the future rather than the present.
Cheering (and playing) through losses isn’t a lot of fun, naturally, but there is also something disorienting about not having the typical benchmarks to evaluate the club’s efforts.
As the Flames embark on a multi-year effort to build a contender, the question becomes: What do we look toward in the interim?
The Four Phases
Greg Amudsen is a Flames fan who maintains the website PuckLuck Analytics (PuckluckAnalytics.com). Over the past 12 months, Greg has developed a contention roadmap that charts the typical phases rebuilding squads experience before becoming champions.
His work describes four distinct rebuild phases: Restock, Develop, Supplement and Optimize. Each successive phase describes an organization’s main priority, while charting the typical player cohorts and points percentage along the way.
The Flames currently are in the Restock phase. Rebuilds become necessary when the pipeline dries up and the existing veteran/core players age out, leave, or can no longer compete.
The restock phase is entirely future-focused, with the aim of drafting your future contention cohort/core stars.
This phase is marked by terrible points percentages and can be accelerated with a deep, aggressive sell-off of assets (plus good work at the draft table).
However, it can still take years to complete. Exiting the restock phase too early is a good way to hobble a rebuild and ensure a peak that settles in the mushy middle before having to try again.
The Development phase is where the new core is nurtured into a true contending cohort. It takes most young players about five years to reach their prime in the league. Even the majority of stars and superstars aren’t quite fully formed when they first make the jump into the NHL (The Sidney Crosbys and Macklin Celebrinis of the world notwithstanding).
This is the phase where a team’s focus starts to shift from the future to the present. Points percentages are still suppressed here, but green shoots appear on the roster in the form of future or emergent stars. The goal isn’t necessarily to rocket back up the standings, but to ensure your new core is locked in and progressing.
The Supplement phase is where clubs start to fill in gaps and compete for the playoffs again.
Up until this point, organizations probably shouldn’t be looking to sign whales in free agency or try to make “hockey trades” for quality, prime-aged vets. But as a young core begins to hit its stride, it makes sense to get aggressive and start to fill out the rest of the supporting infrastructure around them with guys who can help right now.
Finally, the Optimize phase. Or, in fact, the contention phase.
If everything goes right, this is where teams become contenders. Division championships, triple-digit point regular seasons and Stanley Cup expectations live here if a club can restock, develop, and supplement effectively.
Many rebuilds peter out at the cusp of this phase, for a variety of reasons. The contention cohort gathered during the restock phase wasn’t good enough, or they weren’t developed well enough, or they weren’t supplemented in a way to make them into a sustainable contender.
Injuries, coaching, cap management and player defections can all play a part as well.
What to expect
Calgary is aggressively restocking. They have an impressively deep collection of prospects hitting the pipeline right now, but the contention cohort and next era-defining talent(s) are not yet clear. Calgary can’t really exit this phase with confidence until these things take shape.
On the ice, the team isn’t going to win a lot of awards. The on-ice goal of the restock phase is, if anything, to remain respectable even if wins are technically detrimental to your current priority as a franchise (picking as high as possible in the draft).
The current roster has ably demonstrated this down the stretch: They’re consistently playing sound, fundamental hockey.
Related
Calgary may not have the best roster on paper or have any chance to make a splash in the playoffs, but they are rarely an “easy out” most nights. The risk of developing a losing culture or a sense of demoralization in the locker room informs anxieties around rebuilds, and the installation of bad hockey and bad habits can be difficult to overcome.
To put this in context, management definitely doesn’t want the development phase disrupted by a poor environment.
So far, so good.
The Flames have avoided the dysfunction that has seized clubs like the Rangers and Canucks this season, even as their own aspirations of challenging for a post-season berth have fallen apart. The team is still playing about as well as can be expected, and nobody has overtly thrown in the towel.
The vibes are good. Hopefully, they continue as Calgary advances through its rebuild phases.