The Do's and Don'ts of Building A Hockey Team

When you take off the super fan hat and put on your logic boots, it’s a painfully simple equation. The way to build a contending hockey team involves but a few integral steps: build a core through scouting and drafting, and then sign the best young players to long-term deals after their entry-level contracts. The next step is to watch the scrap heap for role players, trade down in age when possible and supplement your lineup by signing one or two key free agents to sensible contracts. The one position that, for the most part requires a veteran, is goaltending. Whether it’s a veteran starter (no older than 35) or a cagey backup, every team wins with a stable goaltending situation.

The formula is straight forward. At most, five or six teams use it well: Detroit and San Jose are the two best, followed by Pittsburgh, Washington, Chicago and Philadelphia. I’ll spare you a trip through each roster – you can check them out at www.nhlnumbers.com. But there is a definite trend: young star players they either drafted or acquired early, both up front and on the back end.

Detroit looks to lose a few of these guys, but their farm system has the next wave. Chicago has a mess of money invested in the crease, but their positional player core is filthy. Washington is suspect in net and made a poor decision with Michael Nylander, but their young core is going to be good for a long time. Pittsburgh should be obvious to any hockey fan; and Philadelphia’s defense isn’t quite up there with the rest of the bunch, but the forwards are deadly. Then there’s San Jose.

The Sharks are the scariest team in hockey. They built a core of young players through the draft, and then traded for Joe Thornton in a lopsided deal with Boston. They lost rental Brian Campbell to free agency, and replaced him with Dan Boyle in a trade with Tampa Bay. Then there's the goaltending. In recent years, they traded away Miikka Kiprusoff and Vesa Toskala, both of whom are now starters. They lost another highly touted goalie in Nolan Schaefer and STILL have incredible depth behind Evgeni Nabokov.

As an Oilers fan, I look at how these teams are built, then I look at how my favourite team is built. It’s painful. Really, really painful. Pre-lockout, the Oilers were strapped for cash and Kevin Lowe made some incredibly shrewd moves to remain competitive. He claimed they were aiming towards the new CBA and things would change in Edmonton. He was right…partially. The Oilers are now spending money like drunken sailors, but the results are the same. Every offseason, fans hear how skilled the team is, but then they fight for the last playoff spot. It worked the first year, but since then the team’s payroll skyrocketed and the poster child franchise for the lockout missed the playoffs. If the season ended today, they would be in 14th place. For the same reason those teams listed above are so good, the Oilers simply aren’t.

The team’s architecture is about as solid as a Jell-o peg leg. Let’s start this foray into the ugly past with the ridiculously deep 2003 draft year. “With the 22nd selection, the Edmonton Oilers pick, from Rimouski Oceanic, Marc-Antoine Pouliot!” That’s right, the guy who rode shotgun with Sidney Crosby. Certainly, he was the reason Crosby put up those numbers. Two picks later, the Philadelphia Flyers pick their current captain, Mr. Everything, Mike Richards. Shea Weber, the player most like Dion Phaneuf in the NHL, went 49th.

Here are the Oilers’ other notable selections from 2003: Jean-Francois Jacques (#68), Zack Stortini (#94). So in the deepest draft year of my hockey following life, the Oilers managed to select a fourth line. Since then, the Oilers’ draft record improved: Devan Dubnyk, Rob Schremp, Danny Syvret, Andrew Cogliano, Sam Gagner, Taylor Chorney, Alex Plante should avoid the ranks of such historic Oiler picks as Jason Bonsignore and Jani Rita…but I’ve been wrong before.

It goes without saying, outside of Ales Hemsky and Tom Gilbert, signing good draftees to long deals after their entry level contracts is a moot point. So let’s move on to the next team building element: the scrap heap. The Oilers made a great deal last season for Curtis Glenncross and he turned the fourth line into something to behold. Yet, when he wanted to re-sign for a paltry (by NHL standards) $1.5 million, the team scoffed, saying they had bigger fish to fry. Incredibly, they made a great deal and a terrible deal with the same player inside a calendar year. Let’s move on to the trades.

After carrying the Oilers to game seven of the 2006 Stanley Cup Final, Chris Pronger asked for a trade. The Oilers made what looked like a good deal: young sniper Joffrey Lupul, young defenseman (or forward, according to Craig MacTravesty) and draft picks. Since then, Lupul morphed into Joni Pitkanen, who transformed into Erik Cole, who also fell victim to the MacTavish curse. Of course, that very same summer, there was another player available for roughly the same money as Pronger. You might have heard of him: Roberto Luongo. But the Oilers thought it was a better idea to give a career backup/platoon goalie a three-year deal that mimics his age: $3.6 million a year for a 36-year-old. Makes sense…right?

Well, with all this money to spend on this level playing field, over the years the Oilers signed a few players. Unfortunately, they decided to operate like the 2000 New York Rangers, not the post-lockout good teams. 31-year-old Sheldon Souray gets a big five year deal, Fernando Pisani got $2.5 million a year (Glenncross got $1.2 mil from Calgary, as a comparison). They gave Dustin Penner an almost 1000% raise to $4.25 million based on one year's work.

Then there is their quote-unquote number one centre. As Scott Tougas pointed out in his list of terrible NHL contracts, Shawn Horcoff received a six-year extension, averaging $5.5 million ($7 million in the first year) that starts after his 31st birthday. This is the same deal Ryan Smyth wanted and they shipped him out of town. I applauded the Ryan Smyth trade, but the Horcoff signing is a major head scratcher.

The Oilers also traded Jarrett Stoll and Matt Greene, both of whom are valuable and affordable commodities, for another 31-year-old defenseman, Lubomir Visnovsky, and his new 5-year, $28 million deal. See a trend here?

Spending to the cap makes sense if it's on a good, young core of players in the primes of their careers. Committing almost $20 million per year in long-term deals to four players over 31 does not.

For fun, here is a list of players the Oilers could have, along with the cap space to add a legitimate top line sniper to complement Ales Hemsky (you can drop all the talk of him not shooting enough/not getting 30-40 goals. As Shaun Deering says, he’ll get 40 goals right after Joe Thornton and Marc Savard do).

Ales Hemsky, Mike Richards, Jarrett Stoll, Sam Gagner, Andrew Cogliano, Robert Nilsson, Kyle Brodziak, Rob Schremp, Curtis Glenncross, Gilbert Brule, Steve MacIntyre, Tom Gilbert, Matt Greene, Denis Grebeshkov, Danny Syvret, Taylor Chorney, Steve Staios, Jason Strudwick, Roberto Luongo, Mathieu Garon (backed up Luongo at World Juniors), Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers, Devan Dubnyk.*

Every forward would be under 30 years old. The Oilers tried using young, skilled players a couple decades ago, but for the life of me, I can’t remember how that turned out.

One last note on the team building formula: Every one of the teams listed has changed coaches to fit their teams. Mike Babcock replaced Dave Lewis in Detroit; San Jose hired Todd McLellan after cutting ties with Ron Wilson in San Jose; Michel Therrien took over from Ed Olczyk in Pittsburgh; Bruce Boudreau got the job after Glen Hanlon in Washington; Chicago gave fired Denis Savard and gave the job to Joel Quennville; and Philadelphia hired Jon Stevens after axing Ken Hitchcock. In Edmonton, Craig MacTavish is in his ninth season.

But who knows, maybe re-inventing the wheel is more fun than using a proven formula.


*Because the results would have differed if these players were acquired or drafted, the draft order in 2006 and 2007 may be different and impossible to predict.



Sources:

www.hockeydb.com
www.nhlnumbers.com
scotttougas.blogspot.com