Quoting: Timmah007
Nah even without mcdavid would still have a top center in the league in Leon so oilers would still be well above mediocrity. Sad part to compare the oilers drought to buffalo's is Edmonton actively tried to improve year after year sure they failed but they tried something. As much as it sounds like I dislike buffalo that's not the case I really like the youth in the system but want to see an effort to be competitive not more of spend to the basement accepting mediocrity as a best case scenario is just unacceptable after this many years.
This simply shows you either know nothing about the Sabres past 10 years or you're being willfully ignorant to it. So i'll break it down for you.
They started their rebuild in 13-14 when they traded Ryan Miller. The couple of years prior to that Regier was actually attempting to re-tool. Ultimately in 13-14 he decided to blow it up, so that's what they did.
That rebuild essentially ended after 14-15 when the genius Tim Murray squandered many of the picks and prospects they had acquired in order to get O'Reilly, Kane, Bogosian, Lehner etc. They tried to short-cut rebuilding without any care for the locker room or the types of players they were getting. There were already locker room issues but this is where they got amplified.
Following that season they attempted to re-tool, make trades and sign UFA's to be competitive. They weren't rebuilding, they simply sucked because of inept management and owners who did a very poor job of hiring that management. Trading for and extending Skinner, Signing Hall, etc were attempts to be competitive.
The latest rebuild essentially started around the middle of the 19-20 season when they fired Ralph Kreuger. They have built their prospect pool mostly over the past 3 seasons with a few drafted a year or 2 earlier (Dahlin, Mittelstadt, Samuelsson). They are one of if not the youngest team in the league even with a 41 year old Anderson and a 35 year old Bishop skewing that number. They've finally managed to fix the locker room issues, and finally have the kids looking up to and listening to the veteran leaders. There are still some holes to fill before that can truly be competitive, but those holes right now are not in the bottom 6. They are finally building the correct way, and now people want to see them make the exact same mistakes they made in 2015.