You mean in their "transition" stage?
Lowest point total in the league while trying to make the playoffs.
Unfortunately, this is a concept that for whatever reason, the “Tank Crowd” doesn’t seem to get.
Even if management realizes deep down that the team in front are in a rebuilding stage, you HAVE to get the kids to compete hard every night and make them try and push for the playoffs. You don’t just go in front of the media and bury your team by saying, “yeah we’re rebuilding and we look forward to getting younger and getting help via the lottery.” What type of message does that send to the vets on the team? Or even the kids? THAT is how you get your kids to party late at night, act unprofessionally, and not take their crafts seriously. “Management doesn’t care about this season so why should we right?” Just a bad bad bad management approach to take. THAT is how you end up like Ottawa and Edmonton.
It’s this willingness to compete night in night out that will help the team form good habits in the long run.
Even during a rebuild stage, you bring in vets IF there are no kids or prospects in the system that are ready for open roles (or even around 90% of said role so that said kid could realistically grow into said role).
That’s why you bring in a Prust (Gaunce was t quite ready at the time), or a Sutter (help take pressure off of Horvat....by filling in on the 2nd line at times while taking defensive assignments....something that Bonino can’t do), or an Eriksson (when Vrbata left, we had no one in the system that could complement Hansen on that right side. Virtanen was too green and Burrows was washed up. Boeser was an unknown entity at the time).
You DON’T just sell off all your vets for picks and then force your current kids to play in roles that they are too green for. Why? Because - even if you’re accumulating picks/prospects, you are likely setting up the current kids within the system to fail. It’s akin to trying to fill a bucket with water that has a small hole in it. It’s one major reason why many teams in the NHL over the last 20 years, have been perennial bottom feeders.