In 2009, Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins won their first Stanley Cup title. In 2010, Jonathan Toews’ Chicago Blackhawks won theirs. That moment in time served as an inflection point for the NHL, one that dictated the next two decades of champions, providing the exact blueprint for glory in a 30-team salary cap league.
When cap space and market efficiency dictate so much strategy, the only way up is to start from the bottom with a rebuild.
The Los Angeles Kings knew it. The Washington Capitals knew it. And the recent run of champions from Tampa Bay, Colorado, Florida and Carolina knew it, too. Since Pittsburgh’s win in 2009, 15-of-18 Stanley Cup wins have come from those eight teams. All of them have a common thread: A run of at least three top-five picks over six years that started the whole process.
It started with a proper rebuild.
What those wins from Crosby and Toews (and Anze Kopitar’s Kings) obfuscated, though, is just how long that process should take.
Fans often hear about a “five-year plan” from front offices and that’s not far off from how long it took those three teams to get there. Crosby won in his fourth season, Toews in his third and Kopitar in his sixth. That’s created an economy of impatience around the league, but the reality is that what those teams did is far from the norm. Especially not now, as these types of rebuilds have become the standard.
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What’s a lot closer to reality is what was once thought to be anomalous: Alex Ovechkin’s Capitals winning in Year 14.
That’s how long Florida needed. Colorado and Carolina needed 13 while Tampa Bay needed 12. It should be noted, too, that the Penguins went back-to-back in Years 13 and 14, while Chicago’s second and third Cup titles came in years nine and 11.
If the ultimate goal is winning it all, the idea of a “five-year plan” is setting teams up for failure. Impatience and desperation can veer a team off course. That’s especially true if the first five years don’t go according to plan and teams start rushing the process.
None of this is to give front offices a free pass to be bad forever, especially if it leaves young players disgruntled regarding a lack of success. But it does mean the hockey world at large should have a better understanding of just how long the process takes.
Winning the Stanley Cup is a 10-to-15-year job when done well, with the eight aforementioned teams winning their first after 10.4 years on average. After five years, the only expectation should be making the playoffs.
All of this depends on when exactly the clock starts on a rebuild.
Some might argue it’s the minute the defining piece is drafted. Some might argue it’s the minute a team stops making the playoffs. For our purposes, the rebuild clock starts the minute a team adds what should become their first cornerstone piece with a top-five draft pick. If that’s the through-line between the eight champs who started with at least three, that’s when the clock should start ticking.
No matter what, it’s better to do it right than to do it fast and that requires a lot more time than many fans are usually comfortable with.
So what does a successful rebuild look like? Based on the eight success stories, there are four stages with fairly clear stepping stones marked by their regular-season performance: accumulation, development, competing and contention.
Accumulation
This is, without question, the most important part of the process to get right and not rush.
The eight teams averaged about 70 points across all three years and collectively garnered 18 top-five picks, an average of 2.3 per team. They added 10 more in subsequent years, but this was the main period when the basis of each team’s core was established. And until a legitimate core was in place, there was no real rush to move forward.
Here, it’s less about years and more about draft capital acquired. However long it takes to get there is how long the accumulation stage should last. It does not make sense to abandon this stage before that happens (cough, Detroit, cough).
Neatly, the magic number before winning it all is roughly 100 wins of draft capital accumulated. While teams don’t need to net all of that during the accumulation stage, they do need to add a large chunk of it when it’s easiest to do so. It also helps to have some value stored from a ‘pre-build’ from before a top-five selection was made (this is roughly two years on average). The Kings getting Kopitar at 11th in 2005 is the best example of that.
With those two things in mind, successful rebuilds earn 50 wins of expected value over their first three drafts and 74 wins over their first five drafts.
What’s interesting is that also happens to be true for six rebuilds that ended up unsuccessful or currently look that way. The Coyotes and Islanders both failed (and it’s fair to wonder whether that would’ve been the case for the Islanders had John Tavares not left), and while the jury is still out on Buffalo, Edmonton and Toronto, time is not in their favor. New Jersey is the final club and is a difficult team to place 10 drafts in. Considering the Devils haven’t made the playoffs two years in a row, we’re inclined to lump them with the failed rebuilds rather than the ongoing ones until they prove otherwise.
On average, the biggest difference between those rebuilds and the ones that worked: Realized gains.
While the Islanders, Maple Leafs and Oilers had the same pick success as their contemporaries and failed for other reasons, the other three never got to the magic number (and the Leafs will only just hit the number for expected value thanks to a surprise No. 1 pick at this year’s draft). For Buffalo in particular, it took so long that the biggest realized gains — Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart — ended up being dealt.
Arizona Coyotes (2002-2013)
Expected Value: 87.1 wins
Actual Value: 40.6 wins
Buffalo Sabres (2012-ongoing)
Expected Value: 180.4 wins
Actual Value: 92.9 wins
Edmonton Oilers (2010-ongoing)
Expected Value: 158.8 wins
Actual Value: 138.8 wins
New Jersey Devils (2017-ongoing)
Expected Value: 109.5 wins
Actual Value: 55.6 wins
New York Islanders (2009-2024)
Expected Value: 119.0 wins
Actual Value: 139.0 wins
Toronto Maple Leafs (2012-ongoing)
Expected Value: 83.6 wins
Actual Value: 136.9 wins
Here’s what that looks like on average in a side-by-side comparison with the successful rebuilds. It helps to start with a stronger base (10 wins up during the pre-build), but by the fourth draft in Year 3, the advantage nets out to 30 wins. That gives the successful teams a three-year jump on reaching 100 draft wins added, 1.5 years faster than expected, while the unsuccessful builds were 1.5 years slower.
It’s not just about having picks; teams need to hit on them.
This is also where non-traditional builds can make up ground. The issue is that it’s simply a lot more difficult without building up a proper baseline of expected value.
The Dallas Stars are the best current example of that, with only one top-five selection from their build (and zero top-10 picks for that matter). From 2015 to 2021, the Stars accumulated just 44.3 expected wins of draft pick value. Their realized gains from drafting Roope Hintz (49th in 2015), Miro Heiskanen (3rd in 2017), Jake Oettinger (26th in 2017), Jason Robertson (39th in 2017), Thomas Harley (18th in 2019), Mavrik Bourque (30th in 2020), Wyatt Johnston (23rd in 2021) and Logan Stankoven (47th in 2021) net out to 111.6 wins.
So yes, if a team can draft as consistently well as Dallas did between 2015 and 2021, it’s possible to build a Cup contender without bottoming out. But going almost 70 wins above expected is the exception, not the rule.
Either way, the draft is the make-or-break zone.
Even if some players don’t end up being part of the eventual championship team, their realized value can still become crucial in shaping the roster via trade. And the faster a team gets there, the quicker it can start taking leaps to the next stages.
Development
The next step is making the shift toward the playoffs. Championship teams aren’t built overnight and it’s unfair to expect a seismic leap from 70 points to 100 — even if some teams have done exactly that. On average, these teams made three separate 10-point jumps to get there — all while still accumulating draft capital to reinforce the depth of future teams.
The big mistake here: Spending first-round picks on trades before the team is ready to compete. The Blackhawks, had they made a selection at the 4th and 45th picks this weekend instead of trading them to Buffalo, would’ve been at 97.1 expected wins during their still short rebuild process. That they’ve only realized 20 or so wins so far is all the more reason to stay the course. (Because draft value is based on a player’s first seven years, I use a projection for future years here). Simply put, they’re not close to being done accumulating to jump toward the development stage.
Again, no need to rush the process and accelerating too early will likely lead to stalling in the future. But it is important to start seeing some tangible results within the team’s core after the fourth draft. By this time, teams should know what they have and whether it’s time to push (Pittsburgh, Toews-era Chicago) or start re-accumulating (Colorado).
Ideally, this is the shortest stage of the rebuild, but it can drag out for a lengthy period if it’s not timed well. It’s also worth noting that, like a lot of things in a rebuild, those that did end up going the distance also got to the playoffs faster (median of 5.9 years compared to 8.0 for the unsuccessful rebuilds).
Competing
Conversely, this stage is the longest: Becoming a consistent playoff team. That doesn’t mean a one-and-done berth, such as the Maple Leafs in 2013 or the Avalanche in 2014. It means being a strong annual bet to make the postseason.
For six years, the eight champions averaged 100 points like clockwork during this stretch. Some progressed faster, some slower, but the key was giving the franchise a shot each year by just getting there.
That, in and of itself, is not a foregone conclusion either. Tampa Bay infamously missed the playoffs in 2017 and Washington missed in 2014. Colorado and Florida both missed a few times before becoming consistent threats.
The real growth that happens here is under the surface. This stage is not only where teams start winning rounds and reaching the conference finals with more regularity (sorry, Toronto), it’s also where each team begins to be viewed as a real threat.
Going through pre-playoff Stanley Cup odds at Sports Odds History, it’s at this stage where these teams started earning respect as a major contender.
Outside of the Kings, every champion had a period where their odds of winning the Stanley Cup were top five in the league on at least three separate occasions. Not only that, only three championships in the salary cap era were won by a team outside of that range: the Kings in 2012 and 2014 and, ironically given their prior history, the Capitals in 2018.
On average, teams reach the true contender sphere around the seven-to-eight-year mark. Of the six failed rebuilds, only Toronto and Edmonton reached that point, which makes sense given the value both teams accumulated. The difference is they reached that point three years after the others on average (nine for Toronto, 13 for Edmonton).
Now for the final hurdle.
Contention
Regular-season success doesn’t always predict playoff success (again, sorry, Toronto), but it is a key indicator of a team’s strength. In the final stage, the eight teams had a consistently tight median right around 110 points, raising the bar even further from where they were during the competitive stage.
This is not just about being a legitimate threat or being a top-five contender; this is where teams compete for Presidents’ Trophies and assert themselves as the team to beat. This is where a rebuilding team’s window is open widest and it’s no shock that 10 of the 15 Cup wins came within the 11-to-15 year range. It’s the stage each team carefully spent the last decade building toward and where the fruits of their labor finally materialized into a championship.
The importance of regular-season success and its correlation with playoff success can be seen best with this year’s Stanley Cup champions. The Hurricanes have gone six straight years winning at least one round of playoff hockey and reaching two conference finals before finally winning it all. Their point totals during that time: 113, 99, 111, 113, 116, 117 — or an average of 111.5 points. Only the Avalanche, who won it all in 2022, have earned more points over that time frame.
All a team can reasonably do in a sport as chaotic as hockey is give itself the best chance to win as often as possible; a window. Carolina did exactly that for six years and that window doesn’t look like it’s closing either.
If you count the competitive period of the eight teams, it’s roughly a 10-year window on average to plan a parade or two — but it’s the final four or five that are most pivotal. That’s where franchises need to make it count and it’s worth noting that they usually do. The eight champions are a combined 15-4 in the Stanley Cup Final.
Patience is everything. It’s not something that comes easily to most fan bases, not when they have to sit through a whole lot of losing to finally get to the good stuff.
But doing it right and giving yourself a real chance to win a Stanley Cup is obviously preferred over cutting corners to minimize pain in the short term. All that does is increase potential long-term pain and make all the effort for naught, where teams just end up back at square one.
There’s a full stack of teams all of this currently applies to most. If the criteria for “proper rebuild” is three top-five picks over six years, there are six rebuilds in motion worth paying attention to over the next decade: Anaheim, Chicago, Columbus, Montreal, Ottawa and San Jose.
Time will tell whether any end up reaching the promised land like the successful rebuilds that have dominated the Stanley Cup landscape over the past two decades. Or whether they fail to find glory like a few others. How they accumulate and develop will very much set the stage for what’s to come and there are already hints of what to expect based on the early stages of the process. It’s why many are already a lot more bullish on the Sharks over the Blackhawks, for example.
With all of this being said, it’s important to remember that a full rebuild is no guarantee. For every Penguins and Blackhawks championship, there is also a failure to go the distance from the Coyotes and Islanders.
Still, the math is on the side of the proper rebuild. If 15 of the last 18 Stanley Cup titles aren’t enough, let’s put it this way. There may only be eight rebuilds that worked in the salary cap era and six that didn’t, but it’s hard not to take those odds against the alternative: Three teams that won through other means and 15 that didn’t. And even two that did, Boston and St. Louis, were one top-five pick shy of qualifying.
It takes a long time to get it right, but for eight cities with 15 championships between them, it was worth the wait. For 24 other franchises, it should be the blueprint.
— Data via Hockey Reference and Evolving Hockey
