EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0So you\u2019re sitting around a table at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, arguing with Dave Bidini over the future of the Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n
Or you\u2019re talking Canucks with Michael Buble, crushing a few Granville Island pints at the Black Frog.<\/p>\n
The topic: To rebuild or not rebuild?<\/p>\n
Do we have what it takes for a retool? Or will it be one of those middle-of-the-road, not-too-good-but-not-too-bad teams, like so many retools produce?<\/p>\n
Can our market handle a rebuild? (Answer: Has anyone ever NOT renewed their season tickets in Toronto?)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a topic in Calgary and St. Louis, no more or less than it is for New York Rangers fans. Or in Washington, where the retool looked pretty good 12 months ago.<\/p>\n
What do you do when your team bottoms out? Can the owner afford a rebuild? (With franchise values in the billions, the answer is always yes.) Will the fans stomach six or seven years out of the playoffs, with no concrete promise that success will follow?<\/p>\n
And what about the players? What\u2019s it like for them?<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of dark days,\u201d said Jason Dickinson, who spent most of four seasons in Chicago before being traded to the Edmonton Oilers at the trade deadline. \u201cA lot of tough moments where you sit there and wonder, ‘Is it all worth it?\u2019 Are you doing the right things? \u2018Am I doing enough to help move things along?’\u201d<\/p>\n
If you see a version of yourself or your team somewhere in all of this, then this is your homework:<\/p>\n
Tonight: San Jose at Anaheim, at 10 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n
Have a nap, then get some beers and snacks and watch the Ducks and Sharks fly around the ice, with Macklin Celebrini, Cutter Gauthier, Will Smith and Beckett Sennecke.<\/p>\n
Two promising young goalies are Yaroslav Askarov and Lukas Dostal. Two fast, exciting teams that will figure out their defensive games, one day. But for now, they\u2019re as entertaining as you could imagine.<\/p>\n
Toronto fans could have a team like this. But not without living through the pain they lived through in Anaheim and San Jose.<\/p>\n
The Ducks missed the playoffs for seven seasons. San Jose\u2019s drought will reach seven if it misses again this season.<\/p>\n
From the stands or your seat on the couch, it takes patience. Down in the dressing room, it\u2019s something else altogether, as very few players or coaches who start a rebuild are still there for that first playoff game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a different experience from a fan to a player,\u201d said Oilers defenceman Connor Murphy, who did a four-year stint as a Phoenix\/Arizona Coyote before transferring to Chicago for another nine seasons.<\/p>\n
Aside from the COVID bubble season, when almost everyone made it, Murphy has never played an NHL playoff game.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a player, it\u2019s hard to go through, just because you want to have the best team possible,\u201d Murphy explained. \u201cYou want (the roster) to be filled with all the free agents available; you want to be able to trade every year for players to add, to get better. When you\u2019re seeing your teammate get traded away or losing guys every season, that\u2019s very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any fool can start a rebuild.<\/p>\n
You trade away your pending free agents. Turn veteran players into as many draft picks as you can accrue.<\/p>\n
But it takes wise management, excellent scouting and development, some slick horse trading and a huge dollop of luck to finish one.<\/p>\n
The Blackhawks embraced their rebuild, and this will be Year 6 with no playoffs. They do not look to be a year behind the Ducks or Sharks, just as the Detroit Red Wings in no way resemble the Montreal Canadiens.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a hard thing to go through,\u201d Dickinson said of his Chicago experience. \u201cFrom a fan experience, the patience has shown very strong in Chicago. It\u2019s not easy to have losing seasons and then stay focused on the future with the young players and what they can bring. As a player, it\u2019s a challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt brings in that business aspect, that you can only control so many things. What point is a team at in their climb? You just try to play your best and be the best teammate you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not easy, Toronto. Or Vancouver. Or Calgary.<\/p>\n
But take a look at what\u2019s cooking in California, and decide for yourself if it\u2019s all worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0So you\u2019re sitting around a table at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, arguing with Dave Bidini over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-592632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}