With big decisions looming, Sakic should take heed of Toronto Maple Leafs’ example

You see Matt Duchene, Gabriel Landeskog, Tyson Barrie in the news a lot lately, and not because of what they’re doing on the ice. As the Avalanche inch towards the NHL Trade Deadline, the vultures are circling closer and closer in hopes of snagging one of the Avalanche’s top young talents, all of whom are signed to contract beyond this season. And with good reason.

It’s not often that rebuilding teams part with top young talents like these, but the Avalanche have hit a unique rock-bottom. Despite their win against the Carolina Hurricanes Friday night and a late rally against Tampa Bay on Saturday, the Avs are still on pace for less than 50 points, the fewest of any NHL team since the 1999-2000 Atlanta Thrashers expansion team finished with just 39 points. With a  projected goal differential of -111, the Avalanche are hurdling towards one of the worst finishes in the modern history of the NHL one five game losing streak at a time.

But for those Avs fans thinking back to the famously bad 2008-2009 Avalanche team that featured the likes of Tyler Arnason, Andrew Raycroft, and a revolving door of 14 different defenseman and fearing another 10 years of suffering, fear not. The Avalanche have the pieces to rebuild quickly and effectively, but only if Joe Sakic has the patience to hold onto the right pieces, accept another year of futility, and finally commit to a youth movement in Colorado. A tall task, maybe, but the NHL’s newest embarrassment just needs to look to the example of the league’s biggest former embarrassment in Toronto.

Exactly two years ago last week, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ management group, led by Brendan Shannahan and Lou Lamoriello, announced a bold new strategy for a team that had squandered in ignominy for nearly a decade. According to a report from the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Maple Leafs were going to do like so many internet GM’s had begged, and burn it all to the ground in a “scorched earth” rebuild.

In the weeks that followed, the Leafs jettisoned the likes of Cody Franson, Mike Santorelli, Daniel Winnik, T.J Brennan, David Clarkson, and Olli Jokinen for a smattering of cap dump contracts, struggling prospects, and most importantly, draft picks. As the season drew to a close, the newly hired Mike Babcock used his first press conference to simmer the hopes of Leafs faithful gunning for another playoff appearance. “If you think there’s no pain coming … there’s pain coming” he said.

So what was to become of the team led by Phil Kessel, James van Riemsdyk, Tyler Bozak, and Nazem Kadri? Two years later after bottoming out, and with a new influx of young talent, the Leafs have returned to relevancy, are in the thick of the playoff hunt, and have even brighter days ahead. As Babcock promised, there was certainly pain in the meantime. The Leafs finished 27th in 2015 with just 68 points and last in the NHL in 2016 with 69 points. But for all the talk of “scorching the earth” the Maple Leafs’ roster remained largely in tact. Three of the top four scorers from 2015 are still critical parts of the team today, ranking 3rd, 4th and 5th in scoring this year. On defense, Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner, both of whom played upwards of 20 minutes a night before the rebuild, are still staples on the Toronto blue line, ranking 2nd and 3rd respectively in ice time this year.

Despite all that talk of fire and flame, five of the team’s biggest names escaped without so much as a singed exterior.

And why is that? Because in the NHL, rebuilding means keeping the young talent you have and looking to get younger. When Shannahan and Lamoriello’s radical language about the Toronto rebuild leaked to the public, fans around the league clamored for their GMs to go out and acquire Toronto’s young and valuable pieces. At the end of the 2015 season, James Van Riemsdyk, Nazem Kadri, Morgan Rielly, and Jake Gardiner were all 25 years of age and younger. But, instead of moving on from that young talent and kicking the can 4 or 5 years down the road, the Maple Leafs held on, moving primarily older and more expensive assets from the periphery of their team. All 4 of those young players, along with elder statesman Tyler Bozak (28), were retained and now play critical roles in ushering in Toronto’s new young talent.

Why do teams rebuild in the first place? Because when things aren’t working, you need to rid yourself of established players and start new. Because the easiest place to acquire lasting new talent is the NHL draft, that means literally “out with the old and in with the new.” But here’s where the metaphorical and real world perceptions of rebuilding come to a head. As much as we’d all like to sit back and “watch the kids play,” no NHL team in their right mind is going to hand the reigns over to a full squad of rookies and AHL players. Even the Toronto Maple Leafs, who have not only an NHL high 8 rookies this year, but also some of the league’s biggest impact first-years in Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and Nikita Zaitsev, have wisely leaned on their veteran players to shelter their young players from the toughest minutes and matchups.

Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are off to spectacular starts to their NHL careers and there’s no doubt that the Leafs would continue to languish without their contributions, but where would those highly touted rookies be without Nazem Kadri shielding them from the toughest matchups?

When the Leaf’s decided to burn it all down, they were right to realize that they could not build a long term winner around Phil Kessel, Nazem Kadri, Dion Phaneuf, and the rest. But the success of their rebuild hasn’t come from the departures of Kessel and Phaneuf (in fact, the pieces from those trades have made a limited impact on today’s roster), but rather, from the decisions that the Toronto Maple Leafs made about their supporting cast. The Leafs decided that when their new talent arrived to the NHL, they wouldn’t be sheltered by the Daniel Winniks, David Clarksons and Roman Polaks of the league, but, instead, by the cast of potential impact players that they already had on their roster.

So let’s look at what the Leafs did do in their rebuild.

• Acquired two additional 1st round picks
• Made 12 trades in which they received more or better draft picks than they gave up
• 2 trades where they gave up more/better picks than they received
• Kept young talent together, while trading older players for draft picks

That’s an easy formula to follow. At each hotbed of NHL activity, the Maple Leafs preyed on saps around the NHL in search of expensive depth for their playoff runs. They found a 1st round pick in rentals Cody Franson and Mike Santorelli, snaked the non-playoff bound Avalanche out of a 4th round pick for 20 games from Shawn Matthias, and on two separate occasions used journeyman Daniel Winnik to acquire 2nd round picks. Like sprinkling fairy dust, the Maple Leafs turned one 1st round pick (24th overall) in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft into picks number 34, 61, and 68. They searched high and low for draft picks and struggling prospects wherever they could find them. Under rocks, behind the refrigerator, if there was an extra draft pick to be had, the Leafs were after it, all without giving up anything that would harm them long term.

None of this is to say that the Leafs didn’t undergo a massive change of course. While the vast majority of their youth remained in place, the Leafs did move on from perhaps the two most central figures in the franchise: their annual leading scorer Phil Kessel, and their captain and defensive leader, Dion Phaneuf.

I won’t devote space in this column to detail the exact returns of each trade, but suffice to say, that aside from the 1st round pick later flipped to acquire Frederik Andersen, Toronto’s newfound success was not born out of these trade returns. A pair of bloated long-term contracts combined with perceptions about locker room issues that surrounded both players posed the Maple Leafs with certain trade challenges that the Avalanche do not currently posses should they move on from some of their top talent. What the Maple Leafs did accomplish with these trades was the flexibility to get younger and the opportunity to shift the burden of leadership and culture onto their youth.

At 26 and 29 respectively, Kessel and Phaneuf were both entering the second part their productive years as NHLers. And with 6 and 7 years in Toronto, these two were the most tenured, central figures in the locker room. They predated the players Toronto would lean on for their future. They pre-dated the new coaching and management staff. They pre-dated all but Tyler Bozak. Kessel and Phaneuf were the “through-line” in a culture of complacency that pervaded everything about the Maple Leafs organization.

To scorch the earth, Shannahan and Lamoriello needn’t scrape down to the bottom of the barrel for his roster, so long as he blew up its cultural center.

So how does this all apply to the rock bottom embarrassment that is the 2016-2017 Colorado Avalanche? It should provide very real encouragement for the future in Colorado. Because using the Toronto’s simple blueprint, the Avalanche are already better off now than the Leafs were in 2015.

Like the 2015 Maple Leafs, the Avalanche are an incoherent hodgepodge of legitimate young talent, questionable depth, and highly respected “win now” veterans. In Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen and Tyson Barrie they boast a comparable, if not markedly superior group to Toronto’s crew of Kadri, van Riemsdyk, Gardiner, and Bozak. On the edges of the team, the Avalanche, like the 2015 and 2016 Maple Leafs, are littered with veteran rentals like Jarome Iginla, Fedor Tyutin, Rene Bourque, and Blake Comeau.

And at the core of the team, in its longest tenured players, they have the same unfortunate rot. They have their Kessel: a 26-year-old singular offensive talent who’s been surrounded by mediocrity and complacency for the duration of his time with the team. And they have their Phaneuf: the top defenseman and outspoken leader on a lengthy expensive contract, leaving his prime too soon to benefit a team that has to start over. If you want to burn down the Avalanche and start over, Matt Duchene and Erik Johnson are the place to start.

By carving out the cultural center of the Avalanche roster, the players who have been central figures for more than seven futile years and have normalized losing hockey games in Colorado, only then can the Avalanche finally start that #NewEra they’re always blathering on about. Let young captain Gabriel Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon finally take the reigns of leadership over without constant overshadowing by veteran acquisitions like Sarich, Stuart, Briere, Beauchemin, and Iginla. Stop with the half way rebuilds, stop with the half-washed up veteran players, stop trading away futures for rentals like Reto Berra, Mikkel Boedker, Shawn Matthias, and Eric Gelinas.

It’s an example for Colorado management that pleads for them to: Stop. Accept that there is pain coming. Don’t try to stop the bleeding with a patchwork of veteran signings. Instead accept the pain, take as many shots as you can in the draft. Wait. Develop. For the first time in Joe Sakic‘s time as GM of the Colorado Avalanche, actually commit to the pain, commit to rebuilding, and commit to youth.

Maybe other critics are right and players Landeskog and Barrie just aren’t good enough to play top roles on a good team. Maybe Nathan MacKinnon flat out isn’t good enough to lead the Avalanche to the promised land. But there are two things those players definitely are: young enough and good enough to support whatever core cast of players the Avalanche build out of drafts to come. That’s not to say that the Avalanche have a Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews waiting in the wings today; in fact, they’re unlikely to find a player of that caliber at the top of this year’s weak NHL Entry Draft. It’s just that….

Scorching the earth like Toronto did isn’t really about starting over from scratch. It never is in a league bound by too many cap and roster restrictions to see key players turn over on a grand scale. Entering into a rebuild like the Avalanche must do now, is about deciding which players you want around when the next wave of help comes of age. The Avalanche are lucky, luckier than Toronto was, to have some real talent that’s young enough to wait on, and some real valuable in the pieces which can no longer be part of the future. The only question now is whether Sakic will set out on a youth-centered rebuild path that should be self-evident or if the Avalanche will try once more to take the kinds of risky shortcuts that got them here in the first place.