It’s Time to Celebrate the End of the Rebuild
By Zach Piteo
The Dawn of a New Day
In Yzerman’s three years, he had gone from $0 to $31M in cap space. That’s about 38% of the total salary cap to play with, as of the beginning of this offseason. And now, after signing 6 free agents and having nearly a full roster filled out, we still have over $10M. Want to talk about flexibility and cap space? The possibilities now are endless…
On the topic of prospect depth, up until very recently it has seemed like we don’t talk about anything else but the players coming up. Admittedly, that’s partially because there was nothing exciting about the NHL team, but it goes to show the growth that has been made in this area as well. It’s amazing what can be done when you start to amass draft picks, rather than trade them away.
The most important thing is this: complete with last week’s free agent signings, the actual 23-man NHL team is finally good again. Not only are they good, but there is a recognizable core developing in the new captain Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi (both of whom will hopefully get extensions very soon), Lucas Raymond, and Moritz Seider on the back end.
They’re not Stanley Cup good, and the process of becoming that good is possibly even harder than what they’ve already done. But as fans, we know that watching this team every night will no longer be cruel and unusual punishment; in fact, it will actually be quite exciting and, dare I say it, fun!
There’s so much to talk about with this team, and we rightfully do try to analyze and discuss every angle. And there is still a lot of work to be done. But I wanted to take a step back, enjoy the sunshine, and take a deep, refreshing breath. Because we’ve been fed a lot of crap by our sports teams in recent years. But finally Steve Yzerman stepped up and authoritatively said the Rebuild is over.