How to rebuild an NHL team: Add centres, defencemen, and get a little luck

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EDMONTON — Are we there yet? 

A National Hockey League rebuild can seem like a summer vacation, with the kids in the backseat. You can usually pinpoint a start date, but when does it end? 

Is the finish line a Stanley Cup like it was in Colorado, an organization many think produced the NHL’s most efficient rebuild? 

Is it complete when you finally have a consistently good regular-season team, like the “Shanaplan” has produced in Toronto? Even if the Maple Leafs have delivered one playoff series win since whenever that particular rebuild was launched? 

What if a team wins a few playoff rounds, like Edmonton, but has not accomplished anything yet beyond a trophy case full of individual awards? Is that success? 

On the occasion of the Ottawa Senators visiting the Edmonton Oilers on Hockey Night in Canada — a rebuild in search of traction against one that has reached everything short of the final goal — we dug in a bit on what we’ve learned about rebuilds over the years. 

“You’ve got to start by acquiring enough assets and draft picks to get your core,” said an assistant GM from the West. “Get the core, then acquire the assets to surround that core. 

“Find the nucleus that comes up together.” 

The people we spoke to receive anonymity, so they could speak freely about other NHL organizations. There was unanimous agreement that a rebuild should start with centremen and stud defencemen, while there is disagreement on when it becomes to time to acquire top-flight goaltending — or if that time even exists. 

“Tampa had (Steven) Stamkos, (Viktor) Hedman and a bunch of guys, but they never won until they got (Andrei) Vasilevskiy,” said a B.C.-based scout. 

OK, but hang on a minute. The Bolts had two first-round picks in that 2012 draft, and they selected Slater Koekkoek at No. 10, nine picks ahead of Vasilevskiy. 

“OK,” the scout said, “You’ve got to have some luck, too.” 

Philadelphia’s rebuild was critically stunted at the 2017 draft, when then-GM Ron Hextall took Nolan Patrick instead of Cale Makar or Miro Heiskanen (or Elias Pettersson). Detroit blew top-10 picks on Filip Zadina and Michael Rasmussen, and the consequences are a Red Wings run that just can’t seem to pop the way Vancouver’s suddenly has. 

The Senators have what looks like an awesome core, with Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson and Josh Norris up front, plus Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson and Jakob Chychrun on the blue line. Joonas Korpisalo is a middle-tier starter among NHL goalies — should be good enough for ignition, no? 

Well, five years after drafting Tkachuk, the Senators roll into Edmonton dead last in the Eastern Conference and 29^th overall. And now they’re starting again with a new (interim) coach and front office.

When does it finally turn around in Ottawa? In Buffalo? In Detroit? 

“They’ve got a leaky blue-line,” said an Eastern Conference pro scout. “Chabot doesn’t defend. He needs to play with a veteran who can really defend. Sanderson is very good, but he’s, what, 21? (Erik) Brannstrom, he’s scared. I don’t know if he can play. 

“They’ve got those good young forwards, and (Claude) Giroux is a solid veteran. But (Vladimir) Tarasenko? That was a swing and a miss. And their Bottom 6, well, it’s just got to be  better than this.” 

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Another scout who saw the Senators recently noticed, “They just don’t know how to win. They’ve lost for so long there. On good teams, it’s passed down. But they don’t have anyone there who’s won before. You’ve got to be careful…” 

A dozen Senators players who line up against Edmonton will be 25 or younger, the vicious cycle of the rebuild: too much youth can’t win in the NHL, but in most cases good, veteran free agents won’t sign on with a rebuild on July 1. They want to win, not build. 

Everyone we spoke to agrees: a critical peril of the rebuild is creating a core of players who have done nothing but lose at the NHL level. By the time you’re ready to win, some are ruined, or just leave due to impatience. 

We saw it in Edmonton, where they lost so consistently between the Taylor Hall draft in 2010 and the Connor McDavid draft in 2015, that they were still picking at No. 4 in 2016 (Jesse Puljujarvi). 

Those players — Hall, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jeff Petry, Justin Schultz — lost so regularly, it affected them mentally. It took the core group of that franchise a couple of playoff losses to figure it all out, and that wasn’t until the 2020s. 

Watch Connor Bedard. You can see it in his body language some nights when his team falls behind. He knows they don’t have the firepower to come back, that this part of the process for the Blackhawks is guaranteed to come with a whole lot of losses. 

You’ve got to make sure that doesn’t leave too big a dent in your most prized young players. But how? 

“In Chicago, they’re just taking a beating,” said a Metro Division scout. “Is that good? You’d better be careful.” 

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