Bottom-5 franchises of the 2010s

[93LEAFS]

Toronto has to be in this honestly. Sure things are brighter now but still no playoff wins. Lest we forget..

- Trading.. Oh dear lord. Kessel for the draft picks that turned into Seguin and Hamilton.What about the picks for Rakell and Gibson for Tyler Biggs? Honestly, too many instances to type this crap out.

- Baffling management decisions regarding drafting, and pro scouting. Committing several million to players like Lombardi, Komaserik, Armstrong, Clarkson, Grabo (only to buy him out a year later), etc. On the drafting side, the Burke school of taking big tough guys over all meant a lot of picks wasted.

- The collapses.. Oh my. Regular season? Oh we got some of that lose 15 of your last 20 games to miss the playoffs. Playoffs? How about game 7 in Boston in 2013.. And 2017.

When it is all said and done, the current team is pretty good with good management, but look at the decade as a whole means no playoff wins and a ton of collapses and bottom 10 finishes consistently. However the current roster and making the playoffs won't leave them bottom 3 over consistently terrible teams like Buffalo and Edmonton.

That trade happened in 2009.

 

[Aceboogie]

No they aren't. They've made the playoffs 5 times and the decade is almost over.

Uh yes they are, that franchise is falling part at an alarming rate. They are not bottom 5 precisely because of making the playoffs, but they are are on one of the sleepest downhill trajectories

 

[Mergatroidskittle]

I think those are the five, although I might change the order slightly.

Then there is a similar list of teams who had awful 2010s compared to their expectations/standards. That might be the list for Toronto and Montreal. Probably Vancouver would join them (a vast wasteland after the near miss in 2010-11). I might put Detroit on that same list as after 15 or so years of success, they have been a non-entity since 2010-11. I don't think these are among the bottom franchises, but their own fans have seen them move away from the top 5 and toward the bottom 5 this decade.

Almost like they collectively adopted the slogan "commitment to mediocrity" and in some cases are struggling to achieve it.

Van won the presidents trophy the next year after the finals loss.. so 2 in the decade with the finals appearance... but okay talk about recency bias, it a big sample size dude

 

[I am not exposed]

Colorado did have the worst season of all teams this decade, but after the Duchene trade, they've been hot.
Edmonton, Buffalo, and Arizona are the obvious. Florida did have a year where they came first in their division. Carolina had been bad almost every year before this current one, so you can add them into the trio. All depends on who you want to add to those 4.
Edmonton
Buffalo
Arizona
Carolina

Two years actually. But yeah, we are bottom 5.

 

[severian]

Edmonton, Buffalo, Arizona, New Jersey (too many bottom-10 finishes), and I'm debating putting Vancouver at 5 because of how many times they've been in the bottom of the league since 2013. But they did have a presidents trophy and cup final appearance to start off the decade.

The Devils have sucked this decade, but I think a Cup finals appearance keeps them out of the bottom 5.

 

[DaveG]

On the other hand, did they ever actually finish in the bottom 5 of the league once? Not sure but I don't think so. Averaged 85 points per season (not counting the strike shortened season) and only had less than 82 points once (14-15, when they finished with 71 points - that may have been a bottom 5 finish)

Otherwise you have a team that finished with 91, 87, 86, 83 (twice) and 82 points. Hardly the dregs of the league by any stretch, in those respective seasons.

Twice, 5th both times. Of course, that was part of the problem. Literally the only time they drafted top 3 the entire decade was pure dumb luck in 2018. They never really bottomed out, but problem is they never really spent enough to build a competitive team by any other means in that time frame either. If not for this past year and the existence of Edmonton they'd be the undisputed #1 to me. Last year was probably enough to drop them to 5 I guess but not out of the bottom 5 entirely.

 

[Puckclektr]

I don't think NJ belongs anywhere on this list. They made a finals and that should automatically take them out of consideration.

Not to mention after that cup appearance they lost their two best players for nothing.

 

[mouser]

FWIW, bottom 10 in each category:

Wins from 2010-11 to 2018-19:
273 Buffalo
278 Edmonton
300 Arizona
311 Carolina
312 Florida
313 New Jersey
317 Ottawa
320 Colorado
330 Toronto
337 Detroit

Playoff wins from 2010-11 to 2018-19:
3 Buffalo (3-4)
5 Florida (5-8)
6 Calgary (6-14)
7 Edmonton (7-6)
8 Carolina (8-7)
9 Arizona (9-11)
11 Winnipeg/Atlanta (11-16), Columbus (11-16), Toronto (11-16)
12 Colorado (12-13)

 

[Chainshot]

Buffalo.




Edmonton

Arizona (hard to win without ownership)


Everyone else.

 

[Sgt Schultz]

Van won the presidents trophy the next year after the finals loss.. so 2 in the decade with the finals appearance... but okay talk about recency bias, it a big sample size dude

And they have been a playoff team how many times in the last six seasons of this decade? That is part of that sample size.

If you are sitting in Vancouver in 2011, you are feeling pretty good about things, feeling like you've turned a corner even despite the finals loss to Boston. Then you follow up the President's Cup the next season by being barely noticeable against the Kings. Things slid downhill from there.

Which was my point: I don't consider them one of the bottom teams of the decade (any more than I consider Toronto, Montreal, or Detroit on that list), but I put them all in the group that had a disappointing decade after setting some expectations. Call it recency bias, if you like, but being on that list pretty much specifies that their recent performance didn't live up to expectations. In both their case and Detroit's, the expectation based on their past achievements. Maybe those expectations were unrealistic, but they left people feeling empty in the second half of the decade, anyway.

 

[KirkAlbuquerque]

Florida, Buffalo, NYI, Edmonton, Carolina

 

[jetsforever]

It's pretty easily Edmonton, Buffalo, Carolina, Arizona, Florida IMO

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Florida, Buffalo, NYI, Edmonton, Carolina

Don't think NYI belongs there. AZ has a worse overall record over the 10 year stretch from 09/10 - 18/19:

AZ/PH: 803 points, 350 wins.
NYI: 843 points, 372 wins

There are 10 other teams with lower point totals and 9 other teams with lower win totals than NYI had over that stretch. The NYI also made the playoffs 4 times in that stretch vs. 3 times for PHX/AZ.

The only thing in AZ's favor is that they made it to the Conf. Finals 1 season, but that, IMO, isn't enough to make up for the overall better performance of NYI. For me, the bottom 5 teams are:

Edm and Buffalo being the worst, AZ, Car, and FLA being in the next tier.

 

[Karl Eriksson]

Uh yes they are, that franchise is falling part at an alarming rate. They are not bottom 5 precisely because of making the playoffs, but they are are on one of the sleepest downhill trajectories

They are very boring.

 

[KirkAlbuquerque]

Don't think NYI belongs there. AZ has a worse overall record over the 10 year stretch from 09/10 - 18/19:

AZ/PH: 803 points, 350 wins.
NYI: 843 points, 372 wins

There are 10 other teams with lower point totals and 9 other teams with lower win totals than NYI had over that stretch. The NYI also made the playoffs 4 times in that stretch vs. 3 times for PHX/AZ.

The only thing in AZ's favor is that they made it to the Conf. Finals 1 season, but that, IMO, isn't enough to make up for the overall better performance of NYI. For me, the bottom 5 teams are:

Edm and Buffalo being the worst, AZ, Car, and FLA being in the next tier.

Yeah i guess I was weighing the 2012 WCF more heavily for Arizona, plus I always had a soft spot for them.

 

[CartographerNo611]

Edmonton




Florida


Buffalo
Arizona
Dallas

 

[Just Linda]

Edmonton, Buffalo, Florida, Arizona, and Dallas. Carolina and Columbus are my 6+7

 

[razor8]

Don't think NYI belongs there. AZ has a worse overall record over the 10 year stretch from 09/10 - 18/19:

AZ/PH: 803 points, 350 wins.
NYI: 843 points, 372 wins

There are 10 other teams with lower point totals and 9 other teams with lower win totals than NYI had over that stretch. The NYI also made the playoffs 4 times in that stretch vs. 3 times for PHX/AZ.

The only thing in AZ's favor is that they made it to the Conf. Finals 1 season, but that, IMO, isn't enough to make up for the overall better performance of NYI. For me, the bottom 5 teams are:

Edm and Buffalo being the worst, AZ, Car, and FLA being in the next tier.

Exactly my thoughts too. Great post.

I can't like posts, so consider this my like to you sir!

 

[unknownbrother]

Not to mention after that cup appearance they lost their two best players for nothing.

A lot of people forget that happened. Especially when I've seen the potential of Hall walking away being mentioned as balancing out the luck of the draft lottery. Nah, mate. Parise and Kovalchuk already did that.

 

[justafan22]

Leafs should be 5th or 6th.

Their 2010-15 run was Oilers/Sabres level bad

 

[frisco]

It's close but:

Edmonton 1x playoffs/1 series win, 305 Regular Season wins
Buffalo 2x/0, 318
Florida 2x/0, 344
Carolina 1x/2, 346
Toronto 4x/0, 360

My Best-Carey

 

[RandV]

The Devils have sucked this decade, but I think a Cup finals appearance keeps them out of the bottom 5.

They were a bit better than the bottom five on their own minute to move up into the next group, but while a win would be different I don't think a Cup final appearance along is really that big a distinction over a 10 year span. There's room for 20 teams to earn that spot, and not to take credit away there's always a Cinderella run every once in a while. And it's not like Vancouver's appearance which happened during a top 5 year stretch which had 5 division titles and 2 Presidents trophy's, the Devils missed the playoffs before their finals appearance and they missed they playoffs again after, which ended up being a 5 year stretch.

The best case example of this would be the Florida Panthers, who somehow had an appearance in their 3rd year as a franchise but were otherwise pretty terrible for the longest time.

 

[vanarchy]

Edmonton
Edmonton
Buffalo
Arizona
Florida

 

[Sergei Shirokov]

1. Edmonton
2. Buffalo



3. Carolina
4. Florida
5. Arizona

 

[Fig]

The Calgary mentions in the 5-10 range does make sense. We started a rebuild early in this decade and Feaster traded all our talent away in the wrong year so the draft was flubbed over and over for quite a few seasons. We also had complete crap drafting mandates until Treliving revised the mandate in 2015. We literally started our rebuild with (1st and 2nd rounders):

Feaster:
2011: Baertschi (injury and attitude issues), Granlund (undersized), Tyler Wotherspoon (when our head scout was super excited about Kucherov and Gaudreau)
2012: Jankowski (Super long term project), Sieloff (development derailed by illness and injury)
2013: Monahan (really good, but flawed and injury issues), Poirier (addiction issues derailed career), Klimchuk (injury issues derailed career),

Burke:
2014: Bennett (Injury + ??), McDonald (Bust), Smith (Truculence bust)

Treliving:
2015: Andersson, Kylington + Traded 1st for Hamilton (If not Hamilton, we were supposedly interested in drafting Chabot, and we had two early 2nds in this draft too as part of the trade for Hamilton)
2016: Tkachuk, Parsons (mental illness, but should be ok?), Dube
2017: Valimaki

Highest draft pick in this period (and ever) - Sam Bennett @ 4. Thank goodness our scout was given some freedom in these years and picked up some pretty damn good gems in the later rounds: Gaudreau, Fox, Ferland, Hathaway, Mangiapane etc.

We literally never tanked. Apparently it was an ownership mandate. We should have been in the mix for the Connor McDavid sweepstakes, but instead we ended up going on a playoff run. Drafting 5 times in the first 2 rounds in 2015 would have been quite interesting though.