Do rebuilds actually work in the NHL?
Rebuild is a dirty word in sports these days. Retool. Reset. Reconfigure the roster. Get younger.
Most owners and executives aren’t in a rush to declare their franchises need to be set on fire. No matter how long you’ve been climbing the proverbial mountain, rappelling down to the bottom is frustrating. It isn’t great for ticket sales, either.
Package it however you like: rebuilds are an accepted and often necessary approach to roster construction in a 32-team NHL with a salary cap. But if it feels like your favorite team has been rebuilding forever, you might be on to something.
Armed with 30 years of team results and timelines, we’re doing a deep dive on NHL rebuilds and answering the tough questions. How long does a rebuild usually take? Does it actually work? Why are teams rebuilding so slowly today?
📈 A Brief History of Rebuilds
Before we begin, we need to define what an NHL rebuild cycle looks like. While a franchise’s direction can be camouflaged, the standings don’t lie. From the research on franchise trends, here’s our definition:
- A rebuild starts when a team:
- Has at least two bottom-10 finishes, including a bottom-8 finish, in a three-year period
- A rebuild ends when a team:
- Makes the playoffs in consecutive years or wins the Stanley Cup in its return to the postseason
- Makes the playoffs in consecutive years or wins the Stanley Cup in its return to the postseason
In order to launch a rebuild, a franchise needs recurring poor results, including at least one truly bad season. The 2023 Capitals, for example, are not a rebuild. Despite a 24th-place finish, they only missed the playoffs once. On the flip side, the 2014 Avalanche didn’t exit their rebuild (2009-2019) from one fluke season that otherwise didn’t disrupt the losing cycle.
Here’s a visual of every franchise’s regular season finish in the last 20 years to identify rebuild timelines. Using our definition, active rebuilds are highlighted in blue (example: Anaheim, 2019-present). Rebuilds completed in the cap era are in orange (Toronto, 2008-2018).
Once you adjust your eyes to the bingo card, you can simply run top to bottom by franchise and see the rebuild windows begin and end. In the open period after a rebuild ends, a team is supposed to be set up to thrive. They’ve been bad, they’ve now made the playoffs twice in a row, and are ready for success.
Let’s take Tampa. The Lightning fell near the bottom of the NHL in 2008, stayed there for most of six years, drafted future Hall of Famers Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov, and Andrei Vasilevskiy, and by 2015 were prepared to be a perennial threat. Four Stanley Cup Finals and two rings later, Jon Cooper is still squeezing playoff spots from that rebuild today. Just like they drew it up.
Now, bring your attention to 2025 — the bottom of the image. Long NHL rebuilds are trendier than Sabrina Carpenter right now.
Thirteen franchises are at least four years into a rebuild. Another four teams finished so low in the standings this past season — Nashville (30th), Boston (27th), Pittsburgh (24th), New York Islanders (23rd) — that 2025 will launch more rebuilds if any of them remain in the league’s bottom 10. A step backward for the New York Rangers (22nd) and they’ll be in the same boat.
⌚ How Long Does a Rebuild Take?
Reminder of our criteria: a rebuild ends when a franchise has earned consecutive playoff berths — a modest milestone of legitimacy. While it might not be the group’s finished product, it’s a signal that postseason success should be imminent, or at least expected. We’ll use Ottawa, for example. If the Senators make the playoffs again in 2026, it would end the rebuild after Year 9. Expectations will shift and excuses will wear thin faster than you can say Tim Stützle. The training wheels will be off.
Nine years sounds so agonizingly long, though. And despite an impressive second half last season, Ottawa is no postseason lock. Insert your Pierre Dorion ‘the rebuild is done’ joke from September 2021.
To measure typical rebuild lengths, the 20 rebuilds completed in the last 20 years are presented below. Excluded are the ugly expansion entries from Atlanta (19 years) and Columbus (17 years) as the cutthroat expansion rules of the day shouldn’t be confused with true rebuilds.
That’s an average of 8.5 years to rebuild in modern history. It’s longer than I’d expected. Despite the seemingly clumsy pace, the Senators’ rebuild would be right on schedule.
Florida (2001-2021) tops the list for futility. Twenty years is more like several failed rebuilds stacked upon one another. But it’s easy to forget that the two-time defending champs were a laughingstock for a quarter century — a record 24 seasons between playoff rounds won. There’s still hope, Sabres fans…
The fastest possible rebuild under our definition was executed by Carolina (2003-2006). They rebuilt in the minimum three years. After losing the 2002 Stanley Cup Final, the Canes crumbled to finish 30th (last place), 22nd, and then won the 2006 Stanley Cup. It can be done. But tossing the sample’s outliers, we’re looking at 5 to 12 years, with 8 or 9 years as the norm.
🏆 How Successful are Rebuilds?
Now, we can appreciate how long rebuilds typically take. But making the playoffs a couple of times, flaming out early, and returning to mediocrity is hardly a successful rebuild. It’s just… a rebuild.
We’ll take our 20 rebuilt franchises above and see how things turned out.
The 20 most recent rebuilds were extremely successful. The teams that set themselves up to peak at various points between 2006 and 2025 have mostly done exactly that. Half of the 20 rebuilds resulted in at least one Stanley Cup, generating 17 of the 20 titles in the cap era. Only the 2007 Ducks, the 2008 Red Wings, and the 2023 Golden Knights were not products of traditional rebuilds that ended in the cap era.
Every rebuild can’t end with a Cup, though. There is only one to go around. But even those franchises sans Stanley have had legitimate success from rebuilding. Whether Cup Finals appearances (Edmonton), multiple Conference Finals berths (Islanders), lengthy postseason streaks (Toronto), or a Presidents’ Trophy (Rangers), all but two of the rebuilds created competitive teams. While it’s Cup or bust in public, there are many owners and GMs that would love to make a Conference Final or build a postseason lock to roll the dice with annually.
Our rebuild criteria create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a franchise can finish near the bottom of the league a couple of times and build a roster good enough to get into the playoffs in consecutive seasons, success over the next decade is extremely likely.
Getting there, however, is the challenge. Just ask Steve Yzerman, whose Red Wings’ haven’t made the playoffs in nine years. Or Devils‘ fans, who haven’t watched playoff hockey in consecutive seasons since 53-year-old Martin Brodeur was their goalie.
⏳ Why are Rebuilds So Slow Today?
Which brings us to today… When we look at fast rebuilds, most were completed earlier in the cap era. Six of the eight rebuilds done in six years or less were completed in 2014 or earlier. With the exception of the Rangers and Kings overlapping rebuilds (2019-2023), there have been no quick rebuilds in the last decade. Neither team’s approach has made them a recurring Cup contender yet either.
If the standings fall a certain way this season, all 18 teams above could be in a rebuild in 2026. New Jersey can close their rebuild in 16 years with a playoff spot. For Ottawa and Montreal, a second postseason appearance would cap nine-year rebuilds. The Sabres are at least two years away from meeting our definition, which would be a 15-year odyssey. And who’s betting on that? Vancouver has iced some talented teams the last dozen seasons, but made the playoffs just three times in that span — never consecutively. Chicago, Anaheim, and San Jose are at least six years deep and none is expecting playoff games in 2026.
Completing the rebuild is the tough part.
But why are so many front offices moving glacially slow to rebuild their rosters right now?
- It’s been a winning formula in the cap era. We have 20 years of proof in this article. Washington, St. Louis, and Colorado were each 14 years into a rebuild when they sipped from Stanley. Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Tampa all went scorched Earth to win multiple Cups within 15 years. Building a team deep enough to have a decade of playoff runs — not a handful — has been critical to winning a title.
- NHL general managers like job security. A teardown buys time. A few years to strip the roster. A few years to draft and develop. A few years to add meaningful pieces. A few years to bring it all together. Despite what you might yell at your TV on Saturdays, GMs are smart guys. A long-term vision yields time and patience from ownership.
- A handful of great prospects aren’t making teams competitive. Not every first overall pick is having the Sidney Crosby effect. Whether it’s the overall rise in league-wide skill, changes in player development, or the current cap system disincentivizing chasing supporting talent, teams are staying bad well after their star prospects arrive. Expediting the process hasn’t felt like an option for GMs.
- Fan bases are more accepting of rebuilds. If you scroll through social media for 30 seconds, you might dispute this point. But despite how impulsive fandom has become, rebuilds are considered the best way to win consistently. Not long ago, it would be embarrassing to miss the playoffs three, five or seven times straight. Now? It’s just part of the plan.
Conclusion: Rebuilds work in the NHL. But extreme patience is increasingly part of the package.
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