Rest assured, I have no intention of boring you by dwelling at length on statistics and probabilities. That said, any fan of professional sports should be familiar with the Pareto principle. It is the idea that, on average, 80% of outcomes can be explained by 20% of the causes. The principle has been tested in the context of professional sports. For instance, researchers have hypothesized that 15% of players account for 85% of WAR (wins above replacement) in MLB. WAR estimates how many wins a player contributes to their team compared to a theoretical replacement-level player. According to the work of Patrick Bacon, 18.5% of NHL players are responsible for just over 80% of WAR. This is the threshold he chose to determine whether a player qualifies as a star. Bacon estimates that this corresponds to averaging 1.5 wins above replacement per 82 games over the course of a career.
Finding stars
Each Stanley Cup-winning team since the 2011-12 season has featured at least five players who can be classified as stars according to this definition. Several have counted six. Excluding goaltenders, we can roughly estimate that this means a team must include a minimum of five players who rank among the NHL’s top 125 players in order to meet this first condition. As of December 9, the Canadiens have five players who rank among the top 125 point producers in the NHL: Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov, Lane Hutson, and Noah Dobson. This is not an ideal metric for evaluating player quality, but it can still provide a reasonable sense of where the Canadiens’ key pieces stand relative to the rest of the league. A strong case can also be made that Juraj Slafkovsky belongs in this group. The Canadiens’ first line posts a 65% goal share with Slafkovsky at even strength, compared to a 50% goal share with Zachary Bolduc. In addition, the line drops from 61% expected goals share to 36% expected goals share in the absence of the former first overall pick, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Star players do not all contribute at the same level, however. Teams in our sample generally rely on at least two players who truly belong to the elite at their respective positions (Toews and Kane, Kucherov, Stamkos and Hedman or MacKinnon and Makar). At this point, it is not obvious whether the Canadiens have, or will eventually have, a player who genuinely ranks among the elite at his position. If Montreal were to be left without representation on either the Canadian or American Olympic rosters, that would say a great deal about how NHL executives might answer the question we are currently asking. In short, the Canadiens may satisfy the first condition, while they are still searching for a player who ranks among the top 15 or 20 in the NHL. That said, Montreal nonetheless boasts one of the league’s best first lines. According to MoneyPuck, the Slafkovsky-Suzuki-Caufield combination ranks eighth in the NHL in expected goals share among lines with at least 100 minutes played together. They also rank fourth in goal share and fourth in shot attempt share. Perhaps the Canadiens can “recreate in the aggregate” the missing star, to borrow a famous line from Moneyball.
Draft strategy
Of course, all of this may seem obvious: good teams have good players. The more relevant question is how those players are acquired. The next criterion generally met by teams in our sample is the following: one of the five star players was drafted outside the first round by the eventual champion. Easier said than done. Here again, the Canadiens are in a strong position. First, due to the selection of Hutson. Second, with the selection of Alexander Zharovsky, who has recorded 23 points in 26 games in what is arguably the second most difficult league in the world, at just 18 years old. Teams that have managed to meet this condition and thus accelerate their rebuild have at times accepted a lower floor in their selection at the draft in exchange for a higher ceiling. The selections of Point and Kucherov, for instance, were viewed as risky at the time. But selecting a depth player does not allow a team to emerge from a rebuild. Remember, 18.5% of players account for more than 80% of WAR. Those are the players who alter a franchise’s trajectory. In sum, adopting a “boom-or-bust” approach at the draft can accelerate a rebuild. If the Canadiens embraced such a strategy with the selection of Hutson, they have at times leaned in the opposite direction as well, with a more risk-averse approach. Acquiring players like Alex Newhook and Kirby Dach offered a higher degree of certainty. Both were already established NHL players with meaningful game samples, which allowed for clearer and more constrained projections of their future value. In practical terms, the range of possible outcomes was narrower because far more information was available.
Finally, teams in our sample have generally held at least two top-three draft picks. Montreal has had only one. That said, one could reasonably argue that Demidov was already the equivalent of a top-three selection at the time he was drafted. If we allow for a slight deviation from the rules, the Canadiens either meet or nearly meet this third criterion. The Kings managed to win a Stanley Cup while drafting in the top three only once during their rebuild (Drew Doughty). However, they benefited from multiple top-five picks and also identified key players outside the top ten (Kopitar and Brown). In short, it is possible to complete a successful rebuild with only one top-three pick, but 80% of the teams in our sample required a second selection in that range.
How to execute the quick rebuild
The Canadiens’ rebuild also had a unique feature: it was remarkably brief. In fewer than five years, Montreal reached a Stanley Cup Final, entered a rebuild and returned to the playoffs. That kind of turnaround surely generates envy among fans of certain other Atlantic Division teams… But is it possible to accumulate enough assets in such a short time to become a legitimate contender? The answer is yes, provided a team already has two young star players before the process begins. This is a condition the Canadiens meet thanks to the acquisitions of Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield. Typically, these young stars are already within the organization as a result of previous rebuilds. So while it may be tempting to describe this as a quick rebuild, it may instead be more accurate to view it as a rebuild that has unfolded over a longer stretch of time…
So, do the Habs have enough to contend?
To date, the Canadiens’ rebuild satisfies three of the four criteria we have identified: the presence of at least five star players within the organization, one of those stars having been drafted outside the first round, and the presence of two young stars prior to embarking on a quick rebuild. The Canadiens have had only one top-three pick, which is not a complete anomaly among future Stanley Cup champions, but remains relatively uncommon. It also remains to be seen whether one of Montreal’s stars will ultimately break into the top 15 or 20 players in the NHL.
Acquiring star players is likely to become an increasingly difficult challenge in the coming seasons. With teams no longer as constrained by the salary cap, organizations have generally been able to extend the core players around whom they are built. In that sense, the Canadiens are better positioned than teams like Buffalo, where star players have historically been traded away, preventing the Sabres from reaching the minimum threshold we have identified.
We have now covered four of the thirteen conditions associated with a successful rebuild. For what comes next, I suggest taking advantage of Jacob Fowler’s promotion to watch a few starts… which should help us answer our next set of questions!