What The Blackhawks And Sharks Can Learn About Rebuilding From The Mammoth

At the moment, the Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks are experiencing the unfortunate truth about getting out of a rebuild: there are no guarantees.

Just because you go through years of suffering and collecting high-end talent through the draft doesn't mean you’re a surefire lock to ever develop into a Stanley Cup playoff team and a championship front-runner. It takes many years to do so, and even then, progress isn't assured.

Look no further than the Utah Mammoth, and the former Arizona Coyotes, for proof. 

Indeed, the Mammoth (and its formative, pre-relocation years as the Arizona Coyotes) are the perfect example of a team that had to scratch and claw its way through years of failure, while also taking the proper steps to build a legitimately competitive future in the long run.

GM Bill Armstrong took the job in 2020, and he painstakingly went about his business slowly-but-surely transforming the franchise with moves that required all kinds of patience and a steady diet of disappointment along the way.

Time and again, Armstrong took on bad contracts in exchange for draft picks. He didn't rush prospects like forwards Dylan Guenther and Logan Cooley, nor did he give up on youngsters when it might have been better, optics-wise, for him to do so.

And when he finally built up enough young talent to serve as the core of the organization, Armstrong went out and surrounded those up-and-comers with established players, including former New York Islanders captain Anders Lee, former Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, former New York Rangers center Vincent Trocheck and former Calgary Flames blueliner MacKenzie Weegar.

How the Mammoth acquired Sergachev in particular is arguably the best example of asset management in a rebuild. Armstrong acquired former winger Andrew Ladd back in July 2021 from the Islanders in a cap dump that also gave them a 2021 second-round draft pick, a 2022 conditional second-round pick and a 2023 conditional third-round pick in exchange for future considerations.

That 2021 second-round pick was used to draft J.J. Moser, who suited up for three seasons and developed as a solid two-way defender with the Coyotes before being dealt to the Tampa Bay Lightning along with Conor Geekie and two picks in exchange for Sergachev. The Russian blueliner is now a key part of the Mammoth's offense.

Prior to making moves like this, the Mammoth were constantly in a state of dismay. We're talking about a team that didn’t play a single playoff game in 12 of the past 13 years. That's an astonishing degree of irrelevancy, but that's the truth about rebuilds. Nothing is assured, even if you take the right route by tearing things down to the studs and starting from scratch.

Like Armstrong, Sharks GM Mike Grier and Blackhawks counterpart Kyle Davidson have tried surrounding their young core with experienced hands. San Jose has brought in Jacob Trouba, Darnell Nurse, Dmitry Orlov, Mason Marchment and Barclay Goodrow over the past few seasons; And Chicago acquired Tyler Bertuzzi, Teuvo Teravainen, Patrick Kane, Ian Cole and Bowen Byram in a similar timeframe.

But there are reasons all of those players were available, and few of those reasons are positive reasons. The painful truth is that the Sharks and Blackhawks are likely to face more turbulence as they try to stick the landing and earn playoff berths sometime soon.

We've said many times now that San Jose in particular might have the most exciting group of young talent in the game. And in the Windy City, the Blackhawks have franchise cornerstone Connor Bedard as well as youngsters Anton Frondell, Frank Nazar, Oliver Moore and Roman Kantserov comprising the foundation for the long haul.

However, neither team is going to be handed their flowers for building up great prospect pools. They're going to have to earn their stripes, and there are plenty of capable opponents who stand in their way. 

You don't climb a mountain without a very real risk that you might fall off. While Sharks and Blackhawks fans won't find any consolation in that fact, they need look no further than the Mammoth as a team that tried and tried again to succeed before at long last finding the right mix.

And even with all of their recent successes, Utah still has much more mountain left to climb.

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