Rebuild reminder: Reconstruction of the Arizona Coyotes won't happen quickly

After the Coyotes fell to the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday, PHNX Sports’ Steve Peters, Leah Merrall and I reminded viewers of the grim road ahead for the franchise’s rebuild. With a dearth of top-line forwards or top-pair defenseman on the NHL roster, and some significant holes in the prospect pipeline, Arizona could be looking at three to five more years of rebuilding depending on your definition of the term (more on that later).

The idea received some pushback from fans online, who thought the projection was off base. The Coyotes, they argued, had proven in the first half of the season that they could be a playoff team soon.

It’s easy to understand that sentiment. They’re fans, first of all. More importantly, they’re Coyotes fans. They want success to come quickly because they haven’t tasted it in so long. They need to believe success can come quickly because the idea of committing to several more years of non-playoff hockey is distasteful, given all that they have already endured.

All of that is fair on an emotional level, but the idea that the Coyotes can flip a switch and become a consistent playoff team next season through a couple free-agent signings and a couple trades is also woefully misguided. First of all, this roster has massive flaws, including a blue line that needs to be almost completely overhauled and, a center depth chart that is still thin. Second, the decision to fast-track a rebuild has proven disastrous for many teams, including three previous iterations of the Coyotes. 

If you want to build sustainable success — GM Bill Armstrong’s stated goal since the time he took over in 2020 — history has proven over and over again that you have to commit to a long and painful overhaul so that you can find both the stars you will need to win Cups, and the depth to sustain your team when injuries or defections occur. It’s a lengthy timeline, and Armstrong has reiterated that fact multiple times, lest people forget.

Here’s a look at four Stanley Cup winners from the past decade, with a rough look at when their rebuild began, when they first made the playoffs, how many times they missed the playoffs between the start of the rebuild and their first Cup, and when they first won the Stanley Cup.

Team	Year rebuild began	Year of first playoff appearance	Year first won Stanley Cup	Number of years without playoffs between start of rebuild and first Cup
Chicago Blackhawks	2002	2009	2010	*5
Pittsburgh Penguins	2001	2007	2009	*4
Tampa Bay Lightning	2007	2011	2020	5
Colorado Avalanche	2011	2014	2022	6

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It’s important to note that the stated goal of a rebuild is largely a modern phenomenon. Research the term and you will find little mention of it before 2010.

The length of time that a rebuild lasts can be hard to define. What do you do with the fact that Colorado drafted Gabe Landeskog in 2011, Nathan MacKinnon in 2013, won the division in 2013-14, and then missed the playoffs three more years including a 48-point season in 2016-17? Did the rebuild actually begin in 2011 after a long run of success? Or did it begin in 2017 when the Avs bottomed out again and then drafted Cale Makar? 

That’s a matter of opinion, but for purposes of this story, it’s hard to ignore the additions of Landeskog and MacKinnon as the first pieces in the foundation of this rebuild. 

The end of a rebuild can also be hard to define. Do you consider the rebuild over when the team makes the playoffs for the first time? If so, you are ignoring teams such as the New Jersey Devils, who made the playoffs last season after a four-season drought but are likely to miss the postseason again this spring as their young and talented core still matures. Is that maturation process part of the rebuild? It was for a couple of the teams listed above.

“I think you have to make the playoffs for at least consecutive seasons to be out of the rebuild so I wouldn’t say that the Devils are completely out of it yet,” said Ryan Novozinsky, who covers the Devils for the Newark Star-Ledger/nj.com.

“If you asked me on the lowest day or the rock-bottom point of this season, I would say that there are still steps to take here and that maybe last year was kind of a fluke. But at the same time, this is also a very talented young core and the pieces are there. I believe this is a top-six forward group that can make a deep run in the playoffs. You’ve just got to fill in the gaps around it.”

Maybe you consider the rebuild over when the team starts buying assets more than selling? If so, how many teams have jumped the gun on that process and later regretted it (including three previously mentioned iterations of the Coyotes)?

If you are an absolutist who does not believe the rebuild is over until you win a Cup, that’s a tough standard by which most teams fail.

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I like Novozinsky’s definition. Once you have established yourself as a perennial playoff team, you can no longer be considered in the midst of a rebuild. But here’s the kicker about those four teams listed in the graphic. They all had No. 1 and/or No. 2 overall picks in years when there were franchise players available at those slots.

Chicago got Patrick Kane first overall in 2007 (Jonathan Toews came at No. 3 in 2006). Pittsburgh got Marc-André Fleury and Sidney Crosby first overall in 2003 and 2005, respectively, and Evgeni Malkin second overall in 2004. Tampa got Steven Stamkos first overall in 2008, and Victor Hedman second overall in 2009. Colorado got Landeskog second overall in 2011, and MacKinnon first overall in 2013.

It’s a hell of a lot easier to speed up the rebuild and make your management team look smart when you have first and second overall picks in years when franchise-changing players are available.

Even so, those rebuilds are not fast. The graphic illustrates that fact, and so do the aforementioned Devils. New Jersey got Nico Hischier first overall in 2017, Jack Hughes first overall in 2019, and Šimon Nemec second overall in 2022, and yet here they are; in danger of missing the playoffs again.

As Novozinsky noted, you still need depth and you need time for your stars and core to mature.

The Coyotes’ four opponents this week offer different but equally important perspectives on the rebuild. We’ve already discussed the Devils, who come to Mullett Arena on Saturday. Let’s look at the Blackhawks.

When did the Blackhawks’ current rebuild begin in earnest? Probably not until GM Stan Bowman stepped down in October of 2021, even though it should have started sooner for a team that will miss the playoffs for the sixth time in seven seasons and only has the one appearance because the NHL expanded the playoffs to 24 teams in the 2020 playoff bubble.

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After drafting seventh overall in 2022, the Blackhawks bottomed out and then won the draft lottery (again) to jump up two spots and select franchise forward Connor Bedard first overall in 2023 (Chicago moved up four spots to select Kane in 2007).

Let’s compare that to the Coyotes. The Blackhawks began their rebuild one season after Armstrong began his in 2020. Even with Bedard and Kevin Korchinski, you won’t find a rational soul alive who thinks the Hawks are close to emerging from the rebuild.

“We’re looking at 2026, 2027 or 2028 as maybe considering possibly making the playoffs,” The Athletic’s Blackhawks beat writer, Mark Lazerus, said in a recent appearance on the PHNX Coyotes podcast. “It’s going to be a bleak and long, miserable time.”

I’d bet the house the Blackhawks will not be a playoff team in 2026, and probably something less than my house that they won’t be there in 2027 either.

How about Thursday’s Coyotes opponent, the Detroit Red Wings, who are fighting to hang onto a wild card spot in the Eastern Conference? Detroit has missed the playoffs for seven straight seasons after making the playoffs for 25 straight seasons from 1990-91 to 2015-16. Did the rebuild begin then or more when the team hired Steve Yzerman as GM in 2019?

“Red Wings fans like to think of it as 2019 because it makes it feel a little less painful; a little more manageable,” said Max Bultman, who covers the Red Wings for The Athletic. “I think there’s an argument for that because that’s when Yzerman came in, but I think it really began when they started selling in the 2016-17 season. That’s when they started picking in the top 10.”

Detroit has some nice pieces in Dylan Larkin, Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond and Alex DeBrincat, but the Red Wings have not drafted above No. 4 during the current rebuild, including a gross injustice in 2020 when they had 39 points in a 71-game season (Covid) but fell from the worst overall record to fourth in the draft lottery.

Unlike the teams in the graphic, they’ll have to hope that core keeps progressing and they hit on more prospects to overcome the lack of franchise-caliber players on the roster and follow the 2019 St. Louis Blues’ rare blueprint for a Cup caliber team.

Yzerman made a flurry of additions this offseason, adding nine players to help the Red Wings take the next step. At the same time, he has been very careful not to set a timeline for the end of the rebuild — unlike former Ottawa GM Pierre Dorion, who infamously declared, “the rebuild is done. Now we’re stepping into another zone” in September of 2021. The Senators will miss the playoffs for a seventh straight season and they fired Dorion in November.

Detroit has lost six straight and is desperately trying to hold off the hard-charging Islanders and the deeply flawed Capitals for a wild card spot, yet Yzerman did not make any moves at the trade deadline to either bolster his team for a playoff run, or bolster it for the future.

“I think the reason Yzerman stood pat at the deadline is probably because some part of him knew that it’s not a year to go all in — but then if you sell you make the team worse and you maybe rob them of that feeling of being in the chase,” Bultman said. “I think they do view that as really important for Seider and Raymond, but probably even for some of the guys older than that like [Michael] Rasmussen — maybe even Larkin who has really only had one year of that in his career.”

And what about Tuesday’s opponent, the Minnesota Wild?

The word rebuild never gets uttered in Minnesota, but the Wild has not escaped the playoffs’ first round since 2015. Like Detroit, the Wild has some nice long-term pieces in Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, Marco Rossi and Joel Eriksson Ek. They also have a bunch of young prospects who will be making their way to the club in the next couple of seasons.

Will it be enough to elevate them above perennial playoff failure, even when the oft-mentioned dead-cap contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter diminish in significance after the 2024-25 season?

We’ll see, but Minnesota’s situation recalls another factor that has doomed the Coyotes’ rebuild efforts in the past: ownership.

“It’s easy to say ‘Tear it down and you’ll be better eventually,’ but there’s some teams that are still fighting it year after year. The rebuild is taking a long, long time,” said Joe Smith, who covered the Lightning during their Cup years and now covers the Wild. “If you’re an owner and your stands are full, your teams are playing meaningful games in March and April every season, and you’re getting at least a playoff round, knowing that the Florida Panthers snuck in last year as an eight seed and they went to the Cup Final, then there’s hope. You’re selling hope.”

“Which approach is better? It depends on the market. This is the state of hockey. They’re mad about hockey. They want to see a competitive product. There’s been a lot of frustration from fans about the first-round thing, but they still keep coming back. If they make a run and somehow get into the playoffs this year, Xcel Energy center will be full on April 22.”

To date, the Coyotes ownership group has remained committed to Armstrong’s long-term plan instead of falling prey to more immediate desires. Team finances are certainly playing a role in that support, but Armstrong appears to have the latitude to see this through. That means that Coyotes fans will have to wait several seasons more before having that long-awaited opportunity at sustained success.

Top photo of the 2022 Cup-winning Colorado Avalanche via Getty Images

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