On Toronto, one thing I’ve commented on a few times in connection with our sell-offs are that it was a bit unfortunate that they occurred kind of in a gap between generations of strong teams. There were nobody that really were desperate when we made those sell-offs. But that it was only a matter of time before Toronto, Winnipeg and co went there.
And sure enough, here we are, and the crap has hit the fan in Toronto. Two years ago everything was perfect in Toronto, and if you would have said ‘wait until you guys failed to win a Cup in two play-offs and everyone will got ape and lose all patience and be ready to blow things up’ — and you would have been laughed off the board.
If Kakko becomes a 40+50 player and Kravy a top 10 forward in the league, will we go nuts if we haven’t won a Cup before the summer of 2022? I am 100% sure of it. There is no patience either here or in Toronto. But that is tomorrow’s concern.
The thing is, you cannot build a legit contender in this league. Why?
1. You don’t have cap space to build a good enough team.
2. Too many teams knows they got a shot, and go for it every year. That wasn’t the case 20 year ago when so many teams knew one of 3-4 teams would win and kind of continuously were rebuilding on the fly.
3. There are 31 teams in the league. Not 24. Before you had 24 teams and no cap, for a long period the Canadian teams couldn’t compete, a few US teams didn’t have resources, like maybe 15 teams had a shot at playing for it. Now it’s like what 28-29 teams.
4. Most importantly, you build a dominant team over many many years. The system we have now doesn’t allow that.
Just look at Pittsburgh, Crosby is as generational as it gets and Malkin is darn close and has even been better than him many years. By far, they — still — don’t even remotely get close to win a Cup most years.
I would bet that Toronto wouldn’t even have had a 50% shot at winning a Cup this season even if they got McDavid or Hedman or someone like that on an ELC before the season. It’s not Dubas fault. He didn’t stand in front of three doors of which one lead to a Cup. Who knows, if they don’t get Tavares they might suck more. Or they might end up paying really big bucks to depth guys who get their stats boosted by Matthews and Marner.
You must be in it for the long run. Have a grade A organization that does a better job than everyone else. Improve your odds, it’s the best you can do.