Which non-playoff NHL team needs to blow it up this offseason?
A couple weeks back in the DFO roundtable, we discussed some fledgling NHL franchises that we believe will turn things around with breakout seasons next year.
Today, we don our pessimist hats.
Of the confirmed or projected non-playoff teams this season, which one needs to totally blow things up?
MATT LARKIN: Will the Seattle Kraken ever get the memo? I almost get second-hand embarrassment seeing where they sit in the standings after they held their UFAs and went into buyer mode at the Trade Deadline. It seems everyone except their own front office understands this team is stuck in pure Mid mode, nowhere near bad enough to bottom out and collect foundational-tier prospects nor good enough to compete for playoff spots. The Kraken would be better off moving a bunch of their veterans and starting over. They’re already behind on a potential rebuild since they held onto free agents like Jamie Oleksiak, Jaden Schwartz and Eli Tolvanen rather than move them in March. Ron Francis has been with the team as its GM or in a more senior role since the club’s inception, and he got nowhere, so his impending departure from the Kraken could be a boon.
PAUL PIDUTTI: There are a lot of teams right now operating with enough hope to retool and cross their fingers. But I don’t think the St. Louis Blues can credibly go that route. Yes, their goaltending and special teams were a nightmare this season. And no, their underlying metrics aren’t that bad. A diehard fan might argue that the Blues certainly have some talent sprinkled across the roster; that Jim Montgomery is a good coach; that Joel Hofer offers future optimsm in goal; that a lot of players are due to rebound next year; and that their prospect pool is above average. All fair comments. But the question of this group’s ceiling has lingered for years now. Just within their own division, are they going to pass Colorado, Dallas, or Minnesota in the short to mid-term, or Utah or Chicago in the mid-to-long term? If the goal is to compete for a Cup again — not just make the playoffs — I just don’t see who leads this core to the promised land.
SCOTT MAXWELL: The Kraken are an obvious answer that I’d agree with, so for the sake of being different, I’ll go with the New York Rangers. While Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin are two prime elite talents to build around, the rest of the roster hasn’t caught up, especially after how the last two seasons transpired. The Rangers failed to properly execute their last rebuild because they couldn’t draft talent, relying instead on trades and free agency to assemble the previous core. Now that Artemi Panarin is gone, New York lacks the youth needed to maintain their competitive window. Up to this point, they have labelled what they’re doing as a retool, but it’s hard to see how they can return to Cup-contention status without completely blowing up this team, spending three to five years drafting and developing talent, and trying again with a different core, maybe with Fox and Shesterkin still in the fold (although the haul they’d get for them would certainly help the rebuild). The Rangers have previously fast-forwarded rebuilds thanks to the lure of New York, but top talents no longer reach free agency. They need to do this properly if they want to win the Stanley Cup anytime soon.
STEVEN ELLIS: If the Los Angeles Kings miss the playoffs, I’m not sure how they feel confident about this group moving forward. It would be weird to blow things up after acquiring Artemi Panarin, but this club still feels far away from being legit contenders. Anze Kopitar is about to retire, Darcy Kuemper and Drew Doughty aren’t getting younger and they’ll have some significant salary space to work with with Kopitar gone and Andrei Kuzmenko becoming a UFA. You still have the core you want to build with – Panarin, Adrian Kempe and Kevin Fiala come to mind. But they lack the defensive depth needed to be true contenders, and their future in net – Carter George and Hampton Slukynsky – are a few years away. Could the Kings trade one of their young goalie prospects to bring in immediate help? No prospect in the system should be off the market. The reality is, L.A.’s future doesn’t look bright enough right now for a short-term retool, and the lineup simply isn’t good enough to be a long-term threat.
MIKE GOULD: I feel like this is my default answer to this question: the Detroit Red Wings just aren’t good enough, and I don’t think they ever will be with this core. They haven’t been bad enough during their lean years to get any legitimate superstars, and now they’ve been elevated into mediocrity. Their drafting record under Steve Yzerman has been just OK, and the young pieces they do have on the precipice of making the league are just more of what they already have. If I were in the Illitch Family, I’d be pushing to replace Yzerman this summer and start shopping everybody not named Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond.
ANTHONY TRUDEAU: I agree with Mike: the Detroit Red Wings haven’t given their fans any reason to believe things will be different when they try again next season. There is something very wrong with the roster construction and internal culture of a team that manages to miss the postseason entirely (DET has just a 5.5% chance of pulling out of its tailspin, per MoneyPuck) after having led its division in late January. The team is mired in its fourth consecutive springtime collapse. Something that adding another Andrew Copp or Justin Faulk to the mix won’t fix, that Yzerman’s obsession with taking muckers and grinders in the top 15 hasn’t looked like fixing, either. Even if you add Alex DeBrincat and Simon Edvinsson to the list of untouchables, the Yzerplan seems likely to run its course without having brought very much elite talent to Hockeytown. Detroit needs the sort of sweeping, transformative changes that will likely give it sole ownership of the second-longest playoff drought in NHL history before things start to get better.
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365
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