How an NHL rebuild goes wrong
In the NHL, the only way to improve the long-term trajectory of a franchise is through the entry draft. It’s a redistribution of young inexpensive talent to the teams that struggled the most the previous season. In the grand scheme of things, a team typically needs at least one, if not two top five picks to win a Stanley Cup.
But, obviously, not every draft pick works out. Just because a player had strong amateur production and physical gifts does not mean their game will automatically translate to the NHL level. That’s where the real danger in roster construction can begin to seep in.
If the player who was taken in the top five of the draft truly explodes onto the scene in the way that both Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel did, the franchise gets ahead of itself. While getting this gift from the hockey gods should set the organization up long-term, it can actually mess up priorities.
McDavid and Eichel both finished their sixth NHL seasons this year and have a grand total of one playoff series win between them. Poor Eichel hasn’t even gotten to sniff a playoff race let alone actually play in the eastern conference playoffs in his career.
That’s where the disconnect forms, talent evaluators get handed a generational talent through the randomness of a lottery and misunderstand their team’s overall talent level. Instead of trying to set up the roster around that young player for a several years, they try to improve the roster too quickly.
This results in bloated contracts above market value for players who won’t help said young player come playoff time. When a general manager throws big money around in the opening hours of July 1st, it never works out.
The Sisyphean struggle in Edmonton
In McDavid’s rookie campaign, he suffered a broken collarbone and missed about half the season. However, in the 45 games he did suit up for, the Ontario native recorded 48 points on an Oilers team that finished seventh in the Pacific division.
So how did then general manager Peter Chiarelli celebrate his generational talent? By doling out a combined $11.5 million for Andrej Sekera and Milan Lucic. This was the summer after he’d given Benoit Pouliot $4 million per year based on one good season as a New York Ranger.
In need of a goaltender the following summer, Chiarelli traded for Cam Talbot and promptly gave the career backup a contract worth $4.16 million per year.
So to recap, that’s $20 million tied up in a second pair defenseman, a third line player on a Stanley Cup team, a 28-year-old power forward with 647 games on his body, and a career backup.
On top of Chiarelli’s pricey shopping for depth players, there’s of course maybe the most infamous NHL trade of the last 15 years:
The justification for this trade was that the Oilers had a second blossoming star in Leon Draisaitl but no number one defenseman to build the defense around. So, in one fell swoop, the Oilers got less than half of the market value for one of the five best left wings in the NHL.
This is all part of a larger discussion about maximizing your draft picks’ value. Just because McDavid is obviously one of the best players ever doesn’t mean he can do it alone. Hockey is a team sport and one player can have a big influence, but no team can win with only one good line at five on five.
Chiarelli tried to skip the development part of a rebuild in hopes of getting immediate results. He got a single playoff series win in 2016–2017 and was fired after the 2018–2019 season.
The Oilers still have a bloated payroll of depth players around McDavid and Draisaitl with no clear path to fixing its problems. With so many veteran players that have no-movement clauses, short of trading McDavid or Draisaitl, there’s no real way to solve the glaring depth issues.
Going into 2021–2022, the team is banking on soon-to-be 40-year-old goaltender Mike Smith to repeat his pandemic season as the only path to being competitive.
For the 2021 season, the Oilers outscored opponents 91–26 in all situations with McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice. Without its dynamic duo, the Oilers were outscored 77–32. The NHL is not the NBA, two elite players cannot carry an entire team to a championship.
So instead of throwing free agency money around at depth players on a good team, the Oilers needed to be more patient and maximize their financial flexibility. While elite talent is obviously the most important part of a successful team, the ability to support them and make them better is right there.
Now, the Oilers are capped out with two superstars and got swept out of a first-round series to a Winnipeg Jets team it beat seven out of nine times in the regular season. The most prescient reason was Jets’ netminder Connor Hellebuyck, but the lack of depth stood out, especially in the triple-overtime elimination game.
Whatever is going on in Buffalo
I felt it only fair if McDavid’s plight got highlighted that I cover his draft mate Jack Eichel in Buffalo. In a normal year, the Oilers’ division usually has enough bottom-feeding teams so it can hang around the playoff hunt until late in the season.
The Sabres on the other hand are in a division with the Bruins, Lightning, Canadiens, Maple Leafs and Panthers. That makes the path to staying in the mix as a mediocre or outright bad team more challenging. Furthermore, understanding everything that’s gone wrong in Buffalo requires taking a step back.
Buffalo doesn’t operate like every other NHL franchise, it’s got a scaled-down front office, and laid-off staff in scouting and talent development. The GM it hired in the summer of 2020, Kevyn Adams, hasn’t had an assistant GM to work with and in my opinion, seems a bit out of his depth for the Sabres’ challenges.
To be fair to Adams, the problems were well established before he was hired. The laundry list of bad contracts and lopsided trades is possibly even worse than the Oilers.
The most glaring of course being Ryan O’Reilly to the St.Louis Blues for Vladimir Sobotka, Patrik Berglund, Tage Thompson, a first, and a second round pic. O’Reilly won a cup with the Blues and Thompson is the only player still with the Sabres.
The free-agent shopping list in western New York is probably worse than Edmonton’s, to be frank: $5 million for Matt Moulson, $6 million for Kyle Okposo, $9 million for Jeff Skinner. All of this is to say Buffalo isn’t failing due to a lack of trying. The team is willing to spend money and be aggressive in the trade market. The problem, like Edmonton’s, is crippling contracts to depth pieces who are not main contributors.
Every team needs secondary scoring to support a star like Eichel. It just can’t be for more than $3.5 million per year. Ideally, a team’s depth scoring comes from its developmental players in a more sheltered role against less difficult matchups. However, teams like Buffalo and Edmonton have had to shoehorn their young players into demanding roles because neither had anyone capable of filling those roles otherwise. The laundry list of busted draft picks asked to do too much in difficult situations grows every year in both places.
Reaching the boiling point
In 2019 Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet said that “he thought that McDavid would be patient for two more years to see if the team was heading in the right direction.” During exit interviews last month, Eichel said he had thinking to do about his future in Buffalo.
In the present day, stars have more agency over the direction of their careers than ever before. Both McDavid and Eichel have already committed six years of their respective lives to the teams that drafted them and are objectively no closer to winning a Stanley Cup than they were on draft night in 2015.
McDavid is obviously the more accomplished of the two. The forward will likely win his second Hart Trophy as MVP and already won a third Art Ross trophy for leading the league in points. The Oilers’ captain is obviously an all-time great this early in his career.
As for Eichel, it’s been glimmers of excellence with factors outside of his control overshadowing his hockey. The constant circus around the Sabres, his bad injury luck and poor supporting cast have inhibited his trajectory. At this point, Eichel is a really good player with an injury-prone label.
Either way, both players have reasonable grounds to be frustrated with their current situations. Neither wants to throw their organization under the bus, but at the same time, it’s got to feel like wasted energy to put every fiber of your being towards getting swept out of the first round or not even making the playoffs.
The Oilers and Sabres both need to re-evaluate their principles of roster building. The glaring issue is that both teams are effectively capped out and have no moves to make to support their respective stars. Spending in free agency and making splashy trades is good in theory. But, going beyond the surface level shows just how little value there actually is. Depth pieces need to be paid like it, not like they’re expected to be meaningful contributors.
This is why it’s so important to do more than just win the draft lottery. Anyone can draft the consensus best or second-best player on stage at a podium in June. It takes shrewd maneuvering and a steady plan to put those players in a position to succeed.
Rushing a rebuild along to maximize a special talent right away might seem smart. Make the playoffs sooner, sell playoff tickets, raise the price of regular season tickets and drum up excitement among the fan base are all good things at face value.
However, in the ultimate goal of a Stanley Cup, those short term gains will come at the cost of long term success. Now, both organizations are dealing with frustrated superstars and no clear way to improve.
