hooverdam
Registered User
- Feb 21, 2013
- 2,499
- 1,748
Didn't they rebuild in a relatively traditional way? Sold off Duchene/ROR, got 1st/2nd overall picks, drafted well with the other top 10 picks, acquired extra picks/prospects
Not quite. The timeline was really:
- rebuild (resulting in Duchene, Landeskog, MacKinnon)
- sign a bunch of older vets to compete after Roy's first season
- suffer vengeance from the PDO monster for a few seasons and miss the playoffs, getting top 10 picks
- historically bad 16-17 season that put them at a crossroads
ROR/Stastny were traded/let go because of contract issues, not because the team intended to take a step back and rebuild on purpose. Duchene was traded because he didn't want to be on the team anymore. None of those were trades that said "we can't win with this core, let's sell it off" like Edmonton did with Hall/Eberle or Buffalo keeps doing every 2 years or the Senators have been doing throughout 2018.
Sakic resisted that. He locked down MacKinnon, slogged through a contract dispute with Barrie and then kept him, backed off on trading Landeskog. Duchene was traded and that was pivotal, but he wasn't traded so the Avs could be a bad team and tank/save money the way Karlsson just was.