Rebuild. That dreaded word that a fan base never wants to hear. What's the first thing you think of when you hear that word? A total teardown of the team? Trading all your star players? Years of being bottom dwellers in the standings? What if it didn't have to be any of those. The word rebuild usually means all of those, but what if you were to rebuild on the fly. Keep the pieces that are working, and replace the rest.

When Eugene Melnyk first dropped the dreaded "rebuild" in his infamous video, we all knew what that meant. He was setting the stage to trade Erik Karlsson. Pierre Dorion would execute the trade shortly thereafter, explaining how it had to be done to rebuild the team. The Ottawa Senators Twitter account tweeted the trade using the word.

News Release: #Sens complete most important trade in rebuild, acquire six assets in Erik Karlsson trade: https://t.co/HpSSpE0oex



Communiqué : Les Sénateurs d’Ottawa réalisent la plus importante transaction dans le cadre de leur reconstruction : https://t.co/YmgYgUI9n7 — Ottawa Senators (@Senators) September 13, 2018

It was a sham. They used that word as an excuse to trade this organization's best player in franchise history. They used it as an excuse to trim salary and lower payroll. They used it after blatantly lying during the town halls that they intended to try their hardest to retain Karlsson. They used it as a way to convince the fans to buy tickets, that the organization is doing what's in the team's best interest on the ice. It was not the rebuild we deserved.

At the end of the last season, the biggest complaint about the team was the use of veterans well past their prime and the youth not getting a fair shot. At the same time, there was enough star power in Karlsson, Matt Duchene, and Mark Stone to keep fans interested. It was almost too obvious to the direction the team should take to try and improve while keeping fans engaged.

With one of the deepest prospect pools they've had in some time, the team was perfectly positioned to sell a rebuild around their three core star players. Even better, they could have likely done it within their internal budget, exactly what Melnyk was striving for.

First off, the team would have to recognize the salary inefficiencies in their roster. First to go would be Zack Smith. At $3.25 million, it's just too large of a cap hit for what he brings for a budget team. Whether or not they could have traded him this offseason with three years remaining on his contract is up in the air, but they had their chances in the past, especially when he was playing alongside Stone. That was their pump and dump opportunity.

The other player that would have to go is Cody Ceci. After much fanfare being drafted from the local Ottawa 67s, he never lived up to expectations and continues to be a sore spot for fans who saw him much differently from management and coaching. It appears the team has finally begun to realise he may not turn into what they hoped he would as seen by the two sides going to arbitration. They would have been best off walking away from the $4.3 million, or trying to find a team willing to part with assets for him.

Again, the Sens missed the boat on trading another player when he had far more value. It's the inability to look ahead at how contracts will affect the roster that has killed this team. With some creativity, they could have dumped Smith and Ceci at their max values, and maybe used those assets as a starting piece to convince a team to take on Bobby Ryan's contract. As an aside, I still find myself surprised they didn't do the same mistake with Curtis Lazar and actually cut ties with him early enough to get a pick which resulted in Alex Formenton.

With Ceci gone, maybe you actually re-sign Fredrik Claesson. Though he had a miserable season last year, he's shown enough flashes of both offensive and defensive talent that a one year contract at $700k should be a no brainer. Subtracting that from Ceci's $4.3 million, you're still saving a net $3.6 million. Add Smith and that's $6.85 million saved. There's Erik Karlsson's raise.

Now assembling the rebuilt roster for 2018-19 is fun. We want the core of star players to mentor the talented youth to set the team up to be competitive in the near future if all goes right. Young kids surrounded by Karlsson, Duchene, and Stone is easily something you can market to the fans. There is one more player we need to remove from the roster. Send Tom Pyatt to the minors, or trade him, or whatever. With only one year remaining on his contract, there's no use for him on a team that's rebuilding.

With the amount of high end prospects that Ottawa has, there are so many options at their disposal. Assuming Jean-Gabriel Pageau gets injured in training camp, this is what I'd run with. It's a total 180 from what we've seen in the past, with the roster overloaded with ELCs. They are cheap though and gives the team the flexibility to extend the big three. It could blow up and the team could perform miserably. But could it really be any worse than trying to watch Alex Burrows and Johnny Oduya play hockey? As a budget team, this is is the type of risk they have to take. We'd quickly find out which of the youth are ready to rise to the challenge. Of course, one could go more conservative and add a player like Nick Paul to the mix, one who's never looked out of place in the NHL. Regardless, it's a roster of youth that the fan base has been craving to watch. Behind a rebuild marketing campaign, if the team falters, it wouldn't come as a surprise. This was the rebuild we deserved.