Why the past few years was the best time to rebuild in the NHL
It’s been a hard past few years for hockey fans. It’s been even harder for NHL capologists, you know, the people who keep a team’s financial contracts in order so they comply with the salary cap. It looked like the salary cap might finally go up a significant amount. Now we might have to wait another year.
There might be a silver lining to this, for certain teams at least. In his latest NHL.com “Over the Boards” mailbag segment, Dan Rosen set out the future plans for the Anaheim Ducks and their return to playoff contention. One of the things he brought up was the impending new contracts for important pieces of the franchise’s future. Both Trevor Zegras and Troy Terry are restricted free agents this season. Eventually, Mason McTavish and Jamie Drysdale will need new contracts as well.
The past few years has seen the NHL have a flat salary cap and empty arenas. That may have been something rebuilding teams could use to their advantage.
Even if Zegras and Terry are signing new contracts this season, the expected time frame of the NHL salary cap going up once again fits along with the Rosen’s estimation the Ducks returning to contention (roughly 3 to 5). Good teams need to spend money. If the Ducks want to be good, they will have to spend money as their contention window opens. The cap rising at the same time that window opens should alleviate a lot of their franchise’s financial concerns.
So here is the silver lining: maybe the past few years might have been the best time in NHL history for teams to undergo a rebuild. Rebuilding teams are frugal, so their low payrolls work well while other teams struggled to balance their checkbooks. The rebuilding Arizona Coyotes weaponized their cap space aggressively by taking on contact such as Shayne Gostisbehere from the Philadelphia Flyers for draft capital.
Seats are a lot harder to sell when your team is rebuilding. Just look at the Buffalo Sabres who were last in the NHL in average attendance during the 2021-2022 season. They didn’t have to deal with the attendance restrictions some Canadian cities did, but another playoff less year and sending Jack Eichel away was enough for fans to stay home or spend money on the Buffalo Bills NFL team instead.
If you’re going to have trouble selling tickets, it might as well be when you’re not allowed to sell tickets anyway. The decision to have empty or half-empty arenas came from local governments. Individual states, cities or provinces saying “you can’t have fans” took away the incentive to improve the team even marginally to sell tickets. If a team tanks in a stadium and no one is around to hear it they still get their draft picks, or however that saying goes.
One team that both fits and bucks this trend was the Ottawa Senators. The Ottawa Senators fully bought into their rebuild roughly around 2019, a season before flat caps and empty areas were even a thought in the back of anyone’s head. In early 2020, owner Eugene Melnyk predicted they would spend close to the cap floor between 2021-2025. Use that as an unofficial idea of when ownership expected the rebuild to be over.
Obviously a global pandemic and Melynk dying changed those plans, but not as much as you might think. The Senators have begun showing signs of competitiveness and sending so far this 2022-2023 season. The Senators and Ducks began their rebuilds roughly around the same time (let’s say 2018-2019 ish). The Senators bucked the trend Rosen was talking about by spending before the salary cap rises.
The Senators had the chance to add Claude Giroux via free agency and Alex Debrincat via trade from the Chicago Blackhawks. Both had proven to be top six, if not top line, players and those chances don’t come often. Sometimes you got to strike and spend money while the iron is hot.
As some teams exit rebuilds, others will start them. On the opposite end of that equation, the Blackhawks are rebuilding as the Kane and Toews era comes to a close. Building through the draft can take time. Maybe the Blackhawks can speed up the process by using that extra cap space.