NHL Rebuilds vs Reloads: Who’s Winning the Gamble?

The NHL regular season is not yet at the midway point and the standings are their usual jumbled mess — especially in the Eastern Conference, where the second- through 11th-place teams are separated by only four points. So all caveats apply about trying to project a playoff field a week before Christmas.

But a glance at the potential newcomers to the tournament — the Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings, New York Islanders and Philadelphia Flyers in the East and the Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks in the West — offers up a defense for a pair of polarizing approaches to team building.

Want to tank, tear it down to the studs and hope a bevy of high draft picks can steer you back to contention? The Red Wings (first place in the Atlantic), Flyers (top wild card in the East), Ducks (second place in the Pacific) and Sharks (second wild card in the West) all have a chance to finally emerge from lengthy rebuilds.

The Red Wings have missed the playoffs in each of the last nine years, the second-longest streak in the NHL behind only the Buffalo Sabres (these rebuilds don’t always work). Detroit has drafted in the top 10 seven times in that span and still has six of those picks on its active roster, including left winger Lucas Raymond, the team’s second-leading scorer, as well as top defensemen Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson.

The Ducks have drafted in the top 10 following each of the seven consecutive seasons they’ve missed the playoffs. Leo Carlsson and Beckett Sennecke, who were picked second and third overall in 2023 and 2024, rank first and fourth on Anaheim in scoring while Mason McTavish, the third selection in 2021, is sixth.

Three of the Sharks’ top five scorers — Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith and William Eklund — are among the four top-10 picks San Jose has drawn during a six-season playoff drought. And Matvei Michkov, whom the Flyers selected seventh overall in 2023, ranks sixth on scoring for Philadelphia, which hasn’t reached the playoffs since the 2020 pandemic bubble.

On the other end of the rebuilding spectrum lie the Islanders and Bruins, who reside in third place in the Metropolitan and Atlantic Divisions after they didn’t take a blowtorch to their rosters last spring and summer.

The Islanders, who haven’t won a playoff round since 2021, traded Brock Nelson to the Colorado Avalanche in March and then overcame minuscule odds (3.5 percent) to win the draft lottery after finishing 12th in the East. New general manager Mathieu Darche hung on to veterans such as Anders Lee, Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Kyle Palmieri while selecting defenseman Matthew Schaeffer with the no. 1 pick and acquiring Emil Heineman and Jonathan Drouin. Those six players all rank amongst New York’s top nine scorers.

The Bruins’ run of eight straight playoff berths ended last year, when franchise icon Brad Marchand was dealt to the eventual repeat Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers while center Charlie Coyle and defenseman Brandon Carlo were traded to the Avalanche and Toronto Maple Leafs, respectively. But Boston signed Morgan Geekie, fresh off his first 30-goal season, to a six-year extension and he currently ranks second in the NHL with 24 goals.

The Islanders, who are in their fifth season at UBS Arena, and Bruins, who play in famously impatient Boston, had unique reasons for trying to shortcut a rebuild. But if the first blockbuster trade of the 2025-26 season is any indication, the Vancouver Canucks might be choosing this path rather than the elongated one that might finally be working for the Red Wings, Flyers, Ducks and Sharks…but still hasn’t paid off for the Sabres and Chicago Blackhawks.

“This doesn’t have to be a full-blown rebuild where it’s going to take five or seven years,” Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford said last Saturday, when Vancouver traded defenseman Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild for defenseman Zeev Buium, left winger Liam Ohgren, center Marco Rossi and a first-round selection in the 2026 draft.

“We’re going to get a really good player in June and this thing can turn for the Canucks, certainly within the next couple of years.”