5 years as president with nothing to show for it. No division titles no playoff wins. Shanahan fired Carlyle when they were in a playoff spot, because the team was flawed. Now they’re barely clinging to a playoff spot, while being shut out for 25 mins by their 42 year old AHL Zamboni driver.
It’s been 5 years and the team is worse off than when he fired Randy. The Shanahan hire is a failure and he should be fired right when the season ends.
Two losses and here they come...
If you look last two Stanley Cup champions - rebuild lasted over 10 years. It was rollercoaster to those teams. If you look their core most of the players were close to 30yo, little under or over. If you look Tampa Bay and Boston same thing. Tampa Bay has rebuild that's been on since they drafted Stamkos. No Cup. San Jose Sharks went over ten years and no cup.
If you measure success by playoff series wins or division titles, then account that we have two top 5 teams in the league in our division. Of last three Stanley Cup finalists from Eastern Conference: Penguins, Capitals, Bruins. We have played two of them last three years in a row first round. Bruins twice and Capitals. No tweener teams, even though we had two good over 100 points season we played against Bruins, that went to finals last season.
Our core is around 22-26 years. This "pain stage" can take a while. Good that you have shown patience, that you can wait under rock until we lose two games in a row to comment anything here.
Two observations for everyone to think:
1) No recent Stanley Cup champion team have acquired top defenders from free agency or trough trade, those have been drafted and or traded as prospects and developed. They have acquired second or third pair dman though. So we might have to wait for two of Sandin, Dermott, Rielly or Liljegren being that top pairing.
2) No team after 2010 have won Stanley Cup with ELC stars as their core pieces. Usually team consists of 27-32 year old core with some veterans and few young stars. So it's seems to be trend. Usually core is drafted and additional pieces traded or bought from UFA market.
So if we win next three seasons or acquire top defender outside of draft. We go against trend. I would be pretty cautious blowing up the core, but I think we might have to visit trade market at least few times. We need good prime aged players around 30, like Muzzin, Hyman, Tavares etc. Or we have to wait until our core reach that age.