{"id":550439,"date":"2026-04-11T16:36:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T16:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/550439\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T16:36:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T16:36:29","slug":"which-non-playoff-nhl-team-needs-to-blow-it-up-this-offseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/550439\/","title":{"rendered":"Which non-playoff NHL team needs to blow it up this offseason?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple weeks back in the DFO roundtable, we discussed some fledgling NHL franchises that we believe will turn things around with breakout seasons<\/a> next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, we don\u00a0our pessimist hats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of the confirmed or projected non-playoff teams this season, which one needs to totally blow things up?<\/p>\n

MATT LARKIN:\u00a0Will the\u00a0Seattle Kraken<\/a>\u00a0ever get the memo? I almost get second-hand embarrassment seeing where they sit in the standings after they held their UFAs and went into buyer mode at the Trade Deadline. It seems everyone except their own front office understands this team is stuck in pure Mid mode, nowhere near bad enough to bottom out and collect foundational-tier prospects nor good enough to compete for playoff spots. The Kraken would be better off moving a bunch of their veterans and starting over. They\u2019re already behind on a potential rebuild since they held onto free agents like Jamie Oleksiak, Jaden Schwartz and Eli Tolvanen\u00a0rather than move them in March.\u00a0Ron Francis has been with the team as its GM or in a more senior role since the club\u2019s inception, and he got nowhere, so his impending departure from the Kraken could be a boon.<\/p>\n

PAUL PIDUTTI:\u00a0There are a lot of teams right now operating with enough hope to retool and cross their fingers. But I don\u2019t think the\u00a0St. Louis Blues<\/a>\u00a0can credibly go that route. Yes, their goaltending and special teams were a nightmare this season. And no, their underlying metrics aren\u2019t that bad. A diehard fan might argue that the Blues certainly have some talent sprinkled across the roster; that Jim Montgomery is a good coach; that Joel Hofer offers future optimsm in goal; that a lot of players are due to rebound next year; and that their prospect pool is above average. All fair comments. But the question of this group\u2019s ceiling has lingered for years now. Just within their own division, are they going to pass Colorado, Dallas, or Minnesota in the short to mid-term, or Utah or Chicago in the mid-to-long term? If the goal is to compete for a Cup again \u2014 not just make the playoffs \u2014 I just don\u2019t see who leads this core to the promised land.<\/p>\n

SCOTT MAXWELL:\u00a0The Kraken are an obvious answer that I\u2019d agree with, so for the sake of being different, I\u2019ll go with the\u00a0New York Rangers<\/a>. While Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin are two prime elite talents to build around, the rest of the roster hasn\u2019t caught up, especially after how the last two seasons transpired.\u00a0The Rangers failed to properly execute their last rebuild because they couldn\u2019t draft talent, relying instead on trades and free agency to assemble the previous core. Now that Artemi Panarin is gone, New York lacks the youth needed to maintain their competitive window. Up to this point, they have labelled what they\u2019re doing as a retool, but it\u2019s hard to see how they can return to Cup-contention status without\u00a0completely blowing up this team, spending three to five years drafting and developing talent, and trying again with a different core, maybe with Fox and Shesterkin still in the fold (although the haul they\u2019d get for them would certainly help the rebuild). The\u00a0Rangers have previously fast-forwarded rebuilds thanks to the lure of New York, but top talents no longer reach free agency. They need to do this properly if they want to win the Stanley Cup anytime soon.<\/p>\n

STEVEN ELLIS:\u00a0If the\u00a0Los Angeles Kings<\/a>\u00a0miss the playoffs, I\u2019m not sure how they feel confident about this group moving forward. It would be weird to blow things up after acquiring Artemi Panarin, but this club still feels far away from being legit contenders. Anze Kopitar is about to retire, Darcy Kuemper and Drew Doughty aren\u2019t getting younger and they\u2019ll have some significant salary space to work with with Kopitar gone and Andrei Kuzmenko becoming a UFA. You still have the core you want to build with \u2013 Panarin, Adrian Kempe and Kevin Fiala come to mind. But they lack the defensive depth needed to be true contenders, and their future in net \u2013 Carter George and Hampton Slukynsky \u2013 are a few years away. Could the Kings trade one of their young goalie prospects to bring in immediate help? No prospect in the system should be off the market. The reality is, L.A.\u2019s future doesn\u2019t look bright enough right now for a short-term retool, and the lineup simply isn\u2019t good enough to be a long-term threat.<\/p>\n

MIKE GOULD:\u00a0I feel like this is my default answer to this question: the\u00a0Detroit Red Wings\u00a0<\/a>just aren\u2019t good enough, and I don\u2019t think they ever will be with this core. They haven\u2019t been bad enough during their lean years to get any legitimate superstars, and now they\u2019ve been elevated into mediocrity. Their drafting record under Steve Yzerman has been just OK, and the young pieces they do have on the precipice of making the league are just more of what they already have. If I were in the Illitch Family, I\u2019d be pushing to replace Yzerman this summer and start\u00a0shopping everybody\u00a0not named Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond.<\/p>\n

ANTHONY TRUDEAU:\u00a0I agree with Mike: the\u00a0Detroit Red Wings<\/a>\u00a0haven\u2019t given their fans any reason to believe things will be different when they try again next season. There is something very wrong with the roster construction and internal culture of a team that manages to miss the postseason entirely (DET has just a 5.5% chance of pulling out of its tailspin, per\u00a0MoneyPuck<\/a>) after having led its division in late January. The team is mired in its fourth consecutive springtime collapse. Something that adding another Andrew Copp or Justin Faulk to the mix won\u2019t fix, that Yzerman\u2019s obsession with taking muckers and grinders in the top 15 hasn\u2019t looked like fixing, either. Even if you add Alex DeBrincat and Simon Edvinsson to the list of untouchables, the Yzerplan seems likely to run its course without having brought very much elite talent to Hockeytown. Detroit needs the sort of sweeping, transformative changes that will likely give it sole ownership of the second-longest playoff drought in NHL history before things start to get better.\u00a0
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365<\/p>\n

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Recent Daily Faceoff Roundtables<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A couple weeks back in the DFO roundtable, we discussed some fledgling NHL franchises that we believe will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-550439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116387052583039489","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}