We actually haven't been trash season after season for a while. We missed the playoffs starting in 2012-13, but were very much still going for it until 2015. That team could have bottomed out and tried for high picks for a number of years, but instead we kept Cory Schneider instead of trading him with the hope that he'd still be good by the time our rebuild was over (we all know how that turned out) and added a young sniper in Kyle Palmieri to go with other vets Adam Henrique and Travis Zajac. This was probably a mistake, looking back on it now. With his help, along with 30 goal seasons from Kyle Palmieri and Adam Henrique, we rebound in 2015-16, and while we did miss the playoffs we also missed out on a top 10 pick, getting Michael McLeod at 12.
The year after, we go for it even more, pulling off an absolute coup in getting Taylor Hall from the Oilers for Adam Larsson. While losing Larsson would hurt the defense long term (he would still be a big help for us today), the value was so lopsided that you just have to do it. The first year with hall we miss the playoffs again, this time bottoming out along with Cory Schneider and picking 1st overall. We add Marcus Johansson and a few other vets in the offseason, and Taylor Hall puts on a Hart trophy performance to get us back into the playoffs. I loved that year. I did. But it likely set us back. Thank goodness we came away with Ty Smith at 17th overall, as there were a lot of really good defensemen high in that draft, and things could have broken much worse for us.
Trading assets at the deadline to get in was the right move, but they were picks and prospects we could have used, either as the players they would turn into for us or as ammo for deals more oriented towards the long term-future of the franchise. Buying rentals is not a move a rebuilding team does. After mostly standing pat in the offseason, letting all the rentals move on to free agency, we were bad again in 2019. Though Hall kept up his Hart trophy production, Kinkaid and Schneider could not replicate the pockets of brilliance they showed in 2017-18, and the goaltending was a garbage fire as a result. Only the emergence of a young goaltender named Mackenzie Blackwood would provide any hope on the goaltending end that year. But it wasn't enough with Taylor Hall out for the season to make a comeback.
That summer Shero went all-in, trading for PK Subban, Nikita Gusev, and signing Wayne Simmonds in free agency. This was the year to try to prove to Hall that he could win here consistently and with the drafting of Jack Hughes first overall there was a feeling that this could be our time. Shero did everything he could short of trading the organization's first round pick (thank god he didn't do that), to make this a winning season, and it went south right away. Six losses in a row saw Ray Shero send Fitzgerald behind the bench, and ended with both Shero and Hynes being fired.
When you look at teams that win multiple championships, they're almost always built through the draft. Including this year, the last three years have seen us acquire as many first round picks (6, 7 if you include Nolan Foote) as in all of the previous six to seven seasons. We're also due to have as many top ten picks the last three years as in the previous seven. We talk about the cupboards being bare, but really we did have things to sell in 2015. Cory Schneider could have brought back a top ten pick (and maybe even more) in 2015. Adam Henrique could have brought back a nice futures package. No one may have wanted Zajac at that contract, but with some retention? He would have had value. If we had sold the vets we had right away, when we started this whole rebuild, we would be much farther along than we are now.
We haven't begun accumulating assets at the quality and quantity rate needed to pull out of a sea of desolation as deep as the one we stood in in 2015 without getting top 10, even top 5 picks every season for as many as five years in a row, and on top of that adding extra picks through smart selloffs of veteran players. We held onto too many valuable people. I would absolutely do the Hall trade again, but our rebuilding activities did not ramp up enough until he was gone.
Lucking into Hughes and Hischier were big accelerators for this rebuild, but all this losing doesn't have to be a bad thing. We're in the guts of what a rebuild looks like, with young players coming and looking better every year. It's hard when you're watching the games and the level of play is what it is, but this is the hard work we need to do to get back to being year in, year out cup contenders. And that is what's coming for us. It might take another couple of years of high, high picks (though I hope it doesn't), but this is all going to come together. And when it does, everyone in the league will notice, because we'll be challenging for the division lead.