A Good Week For Waiting
The NHL had a week where those who have waited had something to crow about.
With the way American sports leagues work, for every team in the MIDDLE there's always a push and pull of what it is they should be doing. Are they ascending? Should they be sinking on purpose? What's their direction? What we know for sure is that they can never, ever be standing still. That's a mortal sin. Never stay where you are! And yet it was a week for those who have.
Connor Hellebuyck's return to Winnipeg, and then his superior-ordered peek-a-boo routine when he got there, kind of masked what it said about where the Jets are and where they're going. The Nashville Predators have won six in a row, to move to second in the Central. On the flip side, it's been a week where the Hawks have come as close as they have to facing a firing squad about what exactly it is they're doing. That came only mere days after, or possibly before they do so again, that serious complaints have been lodged against the San Jose Sharks and where they are in their process and their current inertia. Even if that inertia keeps getting glossed over by repeated Celebrini 3rd period heroics.
Hellebuyck's demand to get out of Winnipeg last summer was clearly a signal that they simply didn't have enough to contend for a Cup anymore, if they ever did. Being deprived of the league's best goalie is certainly going to lessen whatever threat a team carries. Losing him meant to a lot of people that it was time to throw the whole thing in reverse. Because if you're not on the top floor, then you've got to head to the bottom one. Yet the Jets, for now, remain pretty defiant. Scheifele and Connor and Morrissey are still here. They're being buffeted by Perfetti and Bjorck, and hoping all that plus running on the fuel of vengeance at an I'll-show-y0u octane can keep them around the bottom of the playoff picture.
The Preds have resisted the call of the Reaper for a few years now. Many have wondered why they haven't cashed in on Ryan O'Reilly and/or Roman Josi and/or Filip Forsberg, to vacate the middle that they've grown deep roots in, and shift below it in the hopes of bouncing above it. They've won six in a row, being dragged by a certain appendage by their Metamucil crew of Stamkos, Forsberg, and Josi.
After being sentenced to watching the Hawks the past few years, it gets pretty easy to understand why there are front offices putting off a dive into the muck for as long as they can. Pick your team, but all of them that have entered full-out rebuilds still look a half a decade or more from relevance, if they look poised for it at all. Some have never come into the light. Why choose that if you don't have to?
The thing is, that sort of fate waits for all teams, whether they choose it or not. The Preds can ride this Golden Girl-like outfit for as long and as far as it'll take them. But eventually, ROR is probably going to leave. Stamkos will retire. Forsberg and Josi will age and become no longer capable of carrying a team to anywhere near a wildcard spot. And the Preds will be left with years of rebuilding and losing. Maybe they don't need to rush into it.
The idea is that if the Jets or Preds were to jettison their useful, aging pieces now, they may get a jump-start on that oncoming rebuild, and maybe cut out some of the time on it. But when does that ever happen? How do late-round first-round picks that usually come in return for the likes of Scheifele or Josi turn into foundational pieces? They can often become very good players, but they still need one or two to orbit around. It's so rare that a team can sift out a Jarome Iginla for the Joe Nieuwendyk they happen to have on hand.
As we've seen locally and they're starting to sense in the Bay Area, promises of a better tomorrow can only placate the fans for so long. Watch what the UC looks like tonight, interspersed with 10,000 Sabres fans, if Buffalo takes it to the Hawks again. Patience will be thin, let's say.
So perhaps it is worth it to stretch out what you have until the tank is definitely on E, even if it doesn't come all that close to a championship. More games in the spring that mean something, even if they don't mean everything. A chance to pull a playoff upset. Hockey to enjoy instead of mourn.
Fans and media are always in a hurry to sentence a team to a rebuild that has seen its contender status lessen or disappear. But those rebuilds are hardly a guarantee of anything, as we're learning violently around here. They're not even guaranteed to be escapable. Maybe those that have decided to put them off as long as they can, or forever, have the right idea.