Assuming that drafting in the top-5 is a requirement for a cup, how do we account for the fact that all of those teams rebuilt under a completely different lottery system? The 2015 draft saw the odds of finishing last translating to a 1st overall reduced, and in 2016 picks #1-#3 all became lottery picks. Since 2016 the top-5's have looked like this:The burden is not on advocates for a rebuild at this point. It is on the retoolers / tweakers.
The only teams to have won a Cup in the last decade are:
Caps (Ovechkin, Backstrom)
Pens (Crosby, Malkin)
Hawks (Kane, Toews)
Kings (Doughty)
Boston (Horton)
Those are the players drafted in top-5, which is higher than the Wild have drafted in that time.
Those teams were also built through drafting well later in the 1st and 2nd. That goes without saying.
But beside maybe Boston, there is not really a model for the Wild to follow. Take away those guys from the Caps, Pens, Hawks, or Kings and they do not win a Cup.
2018
#1 - Buffalo (finished 31st)
#2 - Carolina (finished 21st)
#3 - Montreal (finished 28th)
#4 - Ottawa (finished 30th)
#5 - Montreal (finished 29th) *Edit: WRONG! Like Minnesnota said, this was actually Arizona
2017
#1 - New Jersey (finished 27th)
#2 - Philadelphia (finished 19th)
#3 - Dallas (finished 24th)
#4 - Colorado (finished 30th)
#5 - Vancouver (finished 29th)
2016
#1 - Toronto (finished 30th)
#2 - Winnipeg (finished 25th)
#3 - Columbus (finished 27th)
#4 - Edmonton (finished 29th)
#5 - Vancouver (finished 28th)
Under this system it's not all that hard to find yourself in the shoes of Vancouver (bottom-3 two years straight and only got to 5th overall) or Arizona (finished bottom-3 twice and bottom-5 once and still haven't gotten a top-5 pick *Edit: WRONG! see above). Meanwhile, teams like Philadelphia, Carolina, and Dallas have jumped up into the top-3 in seasons where they were pretty clearly aiming for the playoffs.
To me it seems like the combination of the newer lottery odds and high league parity (which means that teams stuck in the middle can jump around in the standings dramatically without big differences in performance) means that the tank-and-rebuild approach doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. Drafting well, developing players properly, managing assets and cap space are all more crucial than ever, but deliberately being bad to shoot for high picks doesn't pay off the way it used to.
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