The eyesore organization in Chicago now becomes the first major market revenue-producer in pro sports to shamelessly embrace tanking.
Trading 24 year-old Alex DeBrincat off his second 41-goal season in the past five years in order to effectuate a rebuild because of looming future contract obligations — or at least that was the excuse — would have been tantamount to the Rangers moving a then 24-year-old Mika Zibanejad in 2018.
The Blackhawks are selling off parts. The Penguins — another of the league’s historically favored nations, and one that not once, but twice, perfected the art of tanking — were able to win Cups by bottoming out, so now that’s how organizations think they need to go about things when rebuilds are appropriate. That is cosmically false. Teams that bottom-feed generally sleep with the fishes for a decade or more.
So within three or four years we will know whether Shane Wright’s stare-down of the Montreal draft table was a sign of A) elevated competitiveness and self-belief, or B) self-entitled immaturity.Kind of how it went in retrospect a couple of years after Lias Andersson had tossed his World Junior silver medal into the crowd in Buffalo in 2018 after Team Sweden had been beaten in the title game by Team Canada.
The Rangers had zeroed in on Kaapo Kakko with the second-overall selection following their lottery win, but there was some pretty good debate about whether it would make more sense to take Dach, given the organizational void at center. Then GM Jeff Gorton expressed the majority opinion and went with Kakko. Now, Gorton has Dach in Montreal.
And though Minnesota GM Billy Guerin surely isn’t going to get pushed into a corner by Cam Talbot, who may not be all that thrilled at the prospect of becoming Marc-Andre Fleury’s junior partner, there is no upside in keeping a goaltender unhappy with his role.
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