What happens to the NHL’s eliminated teams? A step-by-step offseason breakdown

For players on the 16 teams that don’t make the playoffs, the lengthy off-season can be like an extended vacation. Players, especially those who don’t compete in the World Championship, have ample downtime to be enjoyed before needing to ramp training back up for the next season. You would think the same might be true of team management. On the contrary, an early exit seems to bring about even more work for an NHL front office.

Not qualifying for the playoffs, or getting eliminated early, just means there are likely more items on a team’s to-do list. Playoff teams still have a lot of the same work to accomplish, but there is generally less need to invoke change with teams that have performed well. It is easier to continue “dancing with the ones that brought ya” then to engage in a post-season purge of players and staff. Winning teams also by necessity compress many of their off-season tasks until after the playoff work of managing travel, juggling rosters, tending to injured players and providing daily media availability is over with.

In the business world, companies conduct a SWOT analysis, giving consideration to the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A post-season hockey evaluation is really no different.

It starts with an evaluation of all facets of the organization, from players to coaches to support staff. Personnel changes on the staff side, obviously more common when teams have been unsuccessful, tend to occupy a lot of time. Aside from the time spent on interviews, public communications and contract negotiation, there is the time needed to bring new people up to speed and to replace the institutional knowledge that leaves when others are relieved of duties or to create new systems and operating protocols entirely.

Hockey staff contracts typically follow the same cycle as player contracts, with terms ending on June 30, so decisions on whether to extend staff, let their deals expire without renewal or terminate them early seems like an NHL spring rite of passage. Too many times, staff are let go not because they were doing a poor job, but because the organization needs to signal to its fan base that something is changing. You would love to think that all decisions are merit-based, but many are far more about optics and change for the sake of change.

Once any off-season staff changes are implemented, the front office attention turns to the playing roster. Management will critically analyze each player’s contributions, their work ethic, the chemistry they showed with their teammates, their fit in the dressing room and so on. Many people don’t appreciate the extent to which non-playing factors can influence chemistry and on-ice success. To find the perfect balance, management needs to analyze off-ice fit and chemistry almost as much as on-ice performance.

Ultimately, club execs will determine which players they want to be the core of their next roster, players they would consider moving, and players they will actively shop.

Management will also try to determine what organizational resources and tactics will help facilitate improvement and cohesion for the group, and what factors may be impeding performance and need to be eliminated or changed. I have seen it all, from sleep consultants and psychologists to new equipment, new-fangled technology, and even a sports science guru or two.

One critical element to forming opinions on the players best suited to remain on your roster is the player exit interviews. Management can uncover a lot about its team’s season from this exercise. During the season, while players are in the thick of the chase, they are much more reluctant to give thoughtful and constructive opinion on what is going well or poorly, both from an individual and team perspective. They also aren’t as likely to dish out their thoughts on the coaching staff, the other team staff, team resources and other organizational opportunities or challenges. At the end of the season, tongues are much looser, especially for those players who know they won’t be returning. Returning players will be more diplomatic, and therefore provide less real insight, but there is still much to be gleaned from these conversations. Aspects such as who the team looks to for leadership in different situations, players’ assessments of their teammates, what support they want from management and even who dines together away from the arena will be revealed and will help inform decisions. The more truth bombs, the better!

It is also valuable to get player evaluations and opinions from as many of your hockey staff as possible. A detailed review of the year-end reports of the team’s analytics department can validate or cast doubt on decisions that were made before or during the year and can add further clarity about goals and strategies for the upcoming year.

And don’t forget trainers. The medical and equipment trainers work among the players on a day-to-day basis. They become part of the fabric of a dressing room, going about their business almost invisibly. They have a better pulse on dressing-room dynamics than any other staff in the organization, including coaches. If teams aren’t asking their trainers about the dressing-room dynamics, they are missing an opportunity to really understand what makes their team tick, and/or what obstacles may stand in the way.

Once player and staff evaluations are done, the management will turn its focus to the draft. The draft is the quintessential opportunity to set up your team’s future, not only through the picks made but also the trade opportunities that may present themselves. The periodic scouting meetings that management participate in throughout a season suddenly become daily meetings in the weeks leading up to the draft, as management seek to get caught up on the scouting work that has been done for many months by the team scouts. Then comes the NHL combine, an opportunity to actually meet and interview the players available to be selected at the draft.

Simultaneously, management needs to be advancing contract discussions with any player who will become a UFA on July 1 and players for whom a “fish or cut bait” decision is required, specifically any restricted free agent who is owed a qualifying offer by the June deadline. For players with inflated qualifying offer entitlements, getting ahead of those situations by either trading the player or negotiating a deal with a cap hit the club can live with is crucial to a successful off-season.

Then comes the unrestricted free agency frenzy period of July. Whether or not a team plans to be an active bidder, it still has to prepare intensely in order to be in a position to take advantage of trade opportunities that may be presented.

Free agency is the height of the signing season. Even a team not chasing big fish in free agency will have numerous depth contracts to negotiate and sign to fill out its American Hockey League roster. Not to mention the need to sign RFAs that were given qualifying offers in June. And that’s assuming you don’t need to proceed to salary arbitration for any of those players.

In 2021, while with the Vancouver Canucks, I submitted 17 new player contracts to the NHL’s Central Registry on the first day of free agency. We turned over a large part of our NHL roster and almost our entire AHL roster as we moved the franchise from Utica to Abbotsford. Most teams carry 46-47 contracts at any one time, a few below the CBA-prescribed 50 contract limit. That meant we turned over more than 35% of our NHL contracts in one day! The NHL never confirmed, but that had to put us in the record books.

The bottom line is that there is no shortage of work to be done in an NHL off-season. Especially for those teams that fail to meet expectations. Or, as they say, no rest for the wicked.

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Chris Gear joined Daily Faceoff in January after a 12-year run with the Vancouver Canucks, most recently as the club’s Assistant General Manager and Chief Legal Officer. Before migrating over to the hockey operations department, where his responsibilities included contract negotiations, CBA compliance, assisting with roster and salary cap management and governance for the AHL franchise, Gear was the Canucks’ vice president and general counsel.

Click here to read Gear’s other Daily Faceoff stories.

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What happens to the NHL’s eliminated teams? A step-by-step offseason breakdown

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