Way back in 2014, when the Red Wings were a playoff team and Dylan Larkin was a wide-eyed freshman at Michigan, excavation crews broke ground on what would become Little Caesars Arena. Shovel by shovel — or rather excavator scoop by excavator scoop — crews dug out 488,000 cubic yards of soil and rock to make way for the arena’s bowl. It took months to lay all the deep pier foundations that steady the building, before a maze of steel girders could be assembled constructing the arena’s skeleton. Then, with brick, steel and glass, crews put together the arena. By September 2017, the arena was ready for hockey games.
As their arena rose from the ground, the Red Wings were falling apart. They missed the playoffs for the first time in 25 seasons in 2016-17, sending former Joe Louis Arena into the night without extra postseason games. Their veterans were aging, and their prospect cupboard, save for Larkin, was rather bare to stay competitive. These were the beginnings of the Red Wings’ rebuild, a construction project that has moved a whole lot of dirt and made a whole lot of progress since some dastardly days in the heart of the rebuild. Eight years later, Detroit has yet to make the playoffs, and its rebuild is continuing a decade since its new arena (if you can call it that anymore) broke ground.
It’s easy to see when a building is completed, but what about a hockey team? Because there’s not a guaranteed indicator that a rebuild is over until a team sees rousing — and by nature, fleeting — success. Where do we set the finish line for a rebuild like the Red Wings’, one where the team was stripped down to the steel girders and foundational piers in a total overhaul?
Often, hockey fans see the end of a rebuild as the moment a team makes the playoffs. It’s a definitive marker ending the trials of the past and introducing the potential triumphs of the future. But even then, marking the end of a rebuild at playoff qualification can be premature Just making the playoffs doesn’t make a team competitive. Half the league does it every year, and not all of those teams have a real shot at winning it all.
Instead, the criteria for a finished rebuild requires some more thought. NHL rebuilds follow a plan, a blueprint if you will, that often projects success into the future and into deep rounds of the playoffs. No team is rebuilding just to make one round of the playoffs. No significant building is made just to stand for just one year. It takes time to install all the pillars that will make an NHL team stand firm for multiple seasons.
Where does Detroit fall in this plan? There are significant pieces already in the lineup, including foundational piers built on Larkin (the only player left from the pre-rebuild), Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond. The steel girders are slowly rising with the likes of Seider, Simon Edvinsson and one day Axel Sandin Pellikka in the projected future defense group. And while the forward corps is chock full of vets acquired through free agency and trades, there are a number of prospects in the pipeline such as Marco Kasper, Nate Danielson and Jonatan Berggren who could be the brick, steel and glass of this roster.
When all is said and done, when the prospects are professionals and the roster is far more competitive, will the rebuild truly be over? Or let’s say the Red Wings actually made the playoffs this season instead of missing by a measly point — would the rebuild be over then, too?
At its core, the concept of a rebuild, like almost all subjective states of being, is sort of made-up. It’s supposed to be a classification for the NHL’s bottom feeders, but it has slowly crept toward being a catch-all expression for teams who aren't successful. Everyone’s rebuilding, especially Detroit over the past eight years.
For any team, it’s hard to define when a rebuild is truly finished. The finish line can’t be drawn at a playoff series, but a rebuilt team should make the playoffs as prerequisite. Even teams who win a playoff series can still be in trouble, like the Seattle Kraken and New Jersey Devils who are retooling after missing the playoffs a year after making the second round.
Under more picky criteria, maybe we can mark the end of a rebuild when a team makes a conference final, one of the top four teams in the NHL with a hearty shot to win it all. These are the teams who have proven they are a cut above the pack. But even then, it’s exceedingly difficult to make such a deep playoff push. Some rebuilds are going to last a long time to reach that goal. If we use conference finals as our benchmark, the Toronto Maple Leafs have been rebuilding since the 2004-05 lockout. While the core idea of this criterion is correct that a rebuilt team should be competitive, it's too exclusive to be useful as an end point.
Perhaps we should take into account sustained success, making the playoffs multiple times in a row. Teams like the Florida Panthers, Edmonton Oilers and L.A. Kings have made the playoffs after some down years of varying degrees.
In this case, it’s hard to know the rebuild is over until it’s well past the end. It’s like crossing time zones in an airplane. You can see that it happened in hindsight, but you can’t see it happening in real time.
A finished rebuild will never be as definitive as a finished building. There’s no grand opening or welcome party to celebrate an NHL team renewed. By a mixture of playoff appearances, deep runs and sustained success, we can see which teams have rebuilt themselves into a contender. Until then, it’s a guessing game to decide when exactly that success will crystallize. For Detroit, it has taken eight years just to be on the precipice of a completed rebuild. For other teams like Buffalo, it has taken even longer.
When the Red Wings finally end their rebuild, there will hardly be any indicators that it’s over. Until then, Detroit has to wait for its rebuild to come together, and then it might wait even longer to realize the rebuild is complete.
