Have the Canadiens pulled off the best quick-turn rebuild of the NHL's cap era?

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Going from dead last in the standings to making the postseason’s final four within four years is a rare feat — so rare that the Canadiens are the first to do so since an upstart Tampa Bay Lightning team back in 2010-11. Tampa Bay lost to the eventual champion Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final that spring, but the young core of that franchise — built around Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman, the No. 1 and No. 2 picks in 2008 and 2009 — went on to be truly special. The Lightning made the Cup Final four times in an eight-season span between 2015 and 2022, including winning back-to-back Stanley Cup titles in 2020 and 2021. Including those Lightning and this year’s Canadiens, just five teams have made a similarly quick leap from the basement to the conference finals over the NHL’s past 38 seasons. Three of those teams went on to win a Stanley Cup in short order, including the Lightning, the 2007-08 Pittsburgh Penguins (winning in 2009, 2016, 2017) and the 2005-06 Carolina Hurricanes (winning that season). If we expand the field to include the Colorado Avalanche — who finished last in 2016-17 and then won a championship five years later — there’s a clear, defined history of teams pivoting out of the NHL’s basement to start a climb up the standings. The Canadiens — as the second-youngest team in the league, with a strong prospect pool and impressively clean cap sheet for 2026-27 and beyond — are well-positioned to do the same, as they begin the Eastern Conference final against the Hurricanes as the underdogs Thursday night. But how Montreal has shifted from a full-scale rebuild, focusing on building through the draft, to a contender almost overnight is unique in the league right now. And its success could be a template that other organizations attempt to follow in the years to come. The notion that a full, scorched-earth rebuild is the appropriate route to a championship really took off following the NHL’s full-season lockout in 2004-05. That lost season brought the institution of a new collective bargaining agreement and what was then a $39 million salary cap, two shifts that changed how the league’s general managers looked at roster construction. The combination of the NHL shifting to a more wide-open, youth-oriented playing style and the age of unrestricted free agency shifting from 31 down to as young as 25 also put a greater focus on the draft. Rather than buying up veterans to fill out super teams, as some franchises had in the late 1990s and early ’00s, GMs had to learn to build. The cap era’s first draft-driven success story initially started with a financially troubled Penguins team needing to tear down out of sheer necessity. With the franchise in transition — and existential peril — Pittsburgh bottomed out and selected Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Jordan Staal at Nos. 1 or 2 in four consecutive drafts between 2003 and 2006. From that pain, they built a champion in short order, with a trip to the Final in 2008 and a Stanley Cup title a year later. At the same time, two big-market U.S. clubs that had each been through a teardown began winning in the Western Conference, with the Chicago Blackhawks’ mini-dynasty taking three Cups in six years (2010, 2013, 2015) thanks to top picks in Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, and the Los Angeles Kings following suit in 2012 and 2014 behind Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty. With so much of the NHL’s top talent concentrated among teams that had been picking at the top of the draft, and with most of the Cup titles starting to go to those three clubs, the copycats followed. But in the wake of the Penguins’, Blackhawks’ and Kings’ successes came painful misfires for the likes of the Edmonton Oilers and Buffalo Sabres, who infamously raced to the bottom for the right to draft Connor McDavid at No. 1 in 2015. Some of those scorched-earth rebuilds went sideways for long enough — with the Sabres’ playoff drought stretching to 14 years (before ending last month) and the Detroit Red Wings’ hitting the 10-season mark — that it scared many organizations off that path. Owners and management are now frequently worried about the damage a botched restructuring could do to a team’s economics, fan base and culture. That’s a big reason why the idea of retooling on the fly has become more en vogue, with the Washington Capitals and Boston Bruins (among others) recently pursuing paths that didn’t rely on bottoming out. The Canadiens’ success, however, illustrates that a well-executed rebuild doesn’t necessarily mean a near-decade of lasting pain. Montreal’s dramatic improvement has resulted in a jump in the standings for five consecutive years, from 55 points in 2021-22 to 68, 76, 91 and 106 this year. Since they were hired in the middle of that last-place 2021-22 season, team president Jeff Gorton and GM Kent Hughes have executed an impressive, multipronged approach, one focused not only on strong amateur scouting via the draft but also savvy pro scouting and using the trade route to bring in talent that will elevate this young group into (and during) its suddenly open contention window. Gorton and Hughes had some young, foundational holdover talent to work with in Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Jakub Dobeš, Kaiden Guhle and Jake Evans when they arrived four years ago. However, they also used high picks to bring in elite pieces (Juraj Slavkovsky at No. 1 in 2022 and Ivan Demidov at No. 5 in 2024) and hit on deeper selections (Lane Hutson at No. 62 in 2022). They also dramatically rebuilt the Habs blue line via trade (Mike Matheson, Alexandre Carrier and Noah Dobson) and added key role players up front (Alex Newhook, Phillip Danault, Zach Bolduc and Alexandre Texier) to accelerate their timeline, doing so not at the expense of their prospect pool or by getting too old too quickly. But what stands out most about the Canadiens’ current fast-track rebuild is that it’s clearly still in its infancy. Montreal is the youngest team to make the conference finals since the 1993 Canadiens, the franchise’s most recent Stanley Cup-winning squad, and the best is still coming for this roster. Looking ahead to some of their summer decisions, you can see Gorton and Hughes haven’t sacrificed their contention timeline to reach this point. They have plenty of cap flexibility to keep adding pieces via trade or free agency, as well as built-in internal upside. Even after graduating several of their high picks, the Canadiens have a top-10 prospect pool, with 21-and-under players Jacob Fowler, Michael Hage, Alexander Zharovsky and David Reinbacher all set to make an impact while on cheap entry-level contracts in the near term. While it’s hard to rank what Montreal has done as the “best” rebuild of the NHL’s cap era, as some of the other franchises that tore down and built through the draft went on to win multiple Cups, it has set a very high standard for how efficient this process can be in the right hands. If the Sabres’ or Red Wings’ decade-plus in the wilderness are the cautionary tales that go with a teardown rebuild, the Canadiens’ rocketing up the standings the past two seasons stands as a sign of what’s possible. Whether they win this series against the Hurricanes or not, the Canadiens are already well ahead of schedule after mustering a 106-point regular season and emerging on top of the Atlantic Division gauntlet this postseason. With the division’s other previously established contenders (the Lightning, Florida Panthers and Toronto Maple Leafs) all hitting an age-related decline, it feels unlikely the Canadiens are going anywhere over the next five or six years. And maybe beyond that, too. They should now be able to make these trips to the final four routine, the way those young Penguins and Blackhawks teams did 15-plus years ago. By embracing a twin track of building through the draft and smart, forward-thinking trade acquisitions, Montreal’s front office has created one of the NHL’s few new-school rebuilds that stands out as a major success story over the past decade. And perhaps a new wave of copycats is on the way, too, especially if the Anaheim Ducks’ and San Jose Sharks’ youth movements pay off similarly for them in the coming seasons, as Crosby, Stamkos and others age out to make way for the league’s new stars and mini-dynasties. The bottom: 58 points in 2003-04 (last) and 2005-06 (next to last) The picks: Marc-Andre Fleury (No. 1, 2003), Evgeni Malkin (No. 2, 2004), Sidney Crosby (No. 1, 2005), Jordan Staal (No. 2, 2006) The top: Stanley Cup titles in 2009, 2016, 2017 The bottom: 59 points in 2003-04 (next to last) and 65 points in 2005-06 (third last) The picks: Jonathan Toews (No. 3, 2006), Patrick Kane (No. 1, 2007) The top: Stanley Cup in 2010, 2013, 2015 The bottom: 68 points in 2006-07 (third last) and 71 points in 2007-08 (tied for last) The picks: Anze Kopitar (No. 11, 2005), Drew Doughty (No. 2, 2008), Brayden Schenn (No. 5, 2009) The top: Stanley Cup in 2012, 2014 The bottom: 71 points in 2007-08 (tied for last) and 66 points in 2008-09 (second last) The picks: Steven Stamkos (No. 1, 2008), Victor Hedman (No. 2, 2009) The top: Stanley Cup in 2020, 2021 The bottom: 39 points in 2012-13 (next to last) and 48 points in 2016-17 (last) The picks: Nathan MacKinnon (No. 1, 2013), Mikko Rantanen (No. 10, 2015), Cale Makar (No. 4, 2017) The top: Stanley Cup in 2022, TBD in 2026 The bottom: 55 points in 2021-22 (last) and 68 points in 2022-23 (fifth last) The picks: Juraj Slafkovsky (No. 1, 2022), David Reinbacher (No. 5, 2023), Ivan Demidov (No. 5, 2024) Spot the pattern. 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