Most of us seem to be in agreement that the Boston Bruins should be trade deadline sellers rather than buyers this season. What that sell actually looks like is a source of debate, though.
Take, for example, two recent polls that we here at WEEI have posted on social media. During this weekend’s Sunday Skate (shameless plug: listen to me, Andrew Raycroft and Bridgette Proulx every Sunday 9-11 a.m.), we asked on the @WEEI Twitter/X account: What should the Bruins do at the deadline?
The four options were add to make a run, stand pat, minor retool for the future, or blow it up. Minor retool for the future (43.2%) narrowly edged out blow it up (41.9%). Just over 85% voted to sell in some way, shape or form.
On Monday, Andy Hart repurposed the poll for WEEI Afternoons with slightly different wording. He posed the four options as: Big buy, small buy, small sell, or big sell.
Again, there was widespread agreement on selling in some form: over 90% in this case. Two-thirds (67%) said “big sell,” while 23% said “small sell.” Andy’s poll leaves a little more open to interpretation. In theory, you could “big sell” without necessarily completely blowing it up.
The group that I’m going to strongly push back against is the 41.9% in the original poll who voted to “blow it up.”
Maybe some people have different definitions of what “blow it up” means, but to me, “blow it up” means completely tearing down the house and then rebuilding from scratch. Like, trade everyone of value, up to and including David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman.
There are definitely some Bruins fans who want that – I’ve heard from them on social media, the radio, and in real life – but I find it awfully hard to believe it’s 41.9%.
Let’s just be realistic about what a full blow-it-up teardown entails. History tells us you would be in for a decade or more of sucking – of missing the playoffs, finishing near the bottom of the league, and drafting in the top five.
Even the “successful” rebuilds generally take that long. The Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2022 after a lengthy rebuild that included going 10 years without winning a playoff series from 2008-18. They made five top-five picks during that time, including taking Nathan MacKinnon first overall in 2013. Even after winning the draft lottery and landing a generational talent, it still took six more years before they won a playoff series and nine years before they reached the conference finals.
The Chicago Blackhawks built a dynasty in the 2010s on the backs of 2007 first overall pick Patrick Kane and 2006 third overall pick Jonathan Toews. The bottoming out to get those picks featured an 11-year stretch from 1997-2008 in which they missed the playoffs 10 times and won zero playoff series. The Blackhawks, by the way, are now eight years into another rebuild that seems to be going nowhere fast despite landing a generational talent in Connor Bedard two years ago.
The Edmonton Oilers are very good now, having reached the Stanley Cup Final last year. Their rebuild saw them win one playoff series in a 15-year stretch from 2006-21 while missing the playoffs 12 times. They won the draft lottery an impossible-to-replicate four times from 2010-15, and it took until the fourth try to finally land a truly generational talent in Connor McDavid, who has combined with 2014 third overall pick Leon Draisaitl to form a Cup-contending core.
Those are the success stories. That’s how long an all-out rebuild takes if you do it “right” and get the requisite draft lottery luck. Want to hear what happens when you don’t get it right?
The Buffalo Sabres are about to miss the playoffs for a 14th straight year. They haven’t won a playoff series since 2007. They’ve picked first overall twice and second overall two other times. The second overalls – Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel – were very good players, but both eventually wanted off the rebuild train and went on to win Cups elsewhere. The first overalls – Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power – are also very good, but they haven’t proven to be transformational talents.
The Detroit Red Wings are trying to avoid a ninth straight year out of the playoffs. They haven’t won a round since 2013. They have not been blessed with the same lottery luck as other bottom-feeders, as they’ve never picked higher than fourth during this run of futility.
The Montreal Canadiens made a fluky Stanley Cup Final run during the weird 2021 Covid season, but otherwise have not won a round in 10 years and have missed the playoffs six times, with a seventh miss probably on the way this season. They won the lottery in 2022, but unfortunately it was a weak draft. They got Juraj Slafkovsky, a good player but not a generational talent.
The Ottawa Senators are trying to make the playoffs for the first time in eight years. The Anaheim Ducks are tracking towards a seventh straight miss, the San Jose Sharks a sixth, the Philadelphia Flyers a fifth. The Arizona Coyotes made the playoffs once in 12 years before moving to Utah, where the team now known as the Hockey Club is probably going to miss the playoffs again.
Do any fans really want that? Do people really want to watch the Bruins miss the playoffs year after year after year? All in the hopes that you win the draft lottery at the right time and accumulate enough high draft picks that you’re maybe – maybe – good again sometime around 2035? Sounds pretty miserable to me.
This is probably all a moot debate anyways. The Jacobs would never sign up for a prolonged rebuild by choice. If the Bruins ever get to that point, it would be because they exhausted every other possibility and had no other choice. It would be because this upcoming retool fails and they no longer have a viable path to building a contender around Pastrnak, McAvoy and Swayman, their franchise pillars at each position. It would be because they already changed general managers and that didn't fix it either. Only at that point would they consider trading those guys away and bottoming out.
The Bruins are going to try the retool first, though. They’re going to try to do what the Washington Capitals have done over the last two years, going from trade deadline sellers in 2023 to one of the top teams in the league in 2025. Or what the Bruins themselves did when Don Sweeney took over in 2015, keeping the pillars in place, moving on from a couple other core pieces, incorporating some youth, and ultimately building to a Cup Final appearance in 2019.
That is a perfectly reasonable path, even if the more reactionary among us don’t see it that way. You rebuild when you don’t have an elite scorer, a No. 1 defenseman and a No. 1 goalie. When you do, you try to retool.