Ed Note: This FanPost has been edited slightly for front-page posting, and is absolutely worth a read. Great work, chirperic!

Comparing the fanbases of the two worst teams this season, Buffalo and Edmonton, you'll find a stark difference of optimism between them. Sabres fans often like to talk about their deep prospect pool and upcoming picks almost as it's proof the rebuild will be successful. Most people seem to believe this, but I was wondering... is this really true? Does having a large volume of picks over a few years guarantee a successful rebuild? Are there other examples of teams completely "blowing it up" in the salary cap era, and how did it work for them?



First, let's take a look at the number of draft picks each team has made since 2000. In this analysis, I only look at the 1st and 2nd round picks.



This chart is interesting on its own, but there's more we can do to help clear up the data. Where you pick is just as important as how many times you pick. Over the years there have been a few studies attempting to apply a "value" to draft picks. Below is a chart made by Michael Schuckers. You can read his full research here, but he derives a set of numbers to guesstimate on how much more valuable the 3rd pick is over the 6th. What's significant in this is the steep drop off from the top picks; the gap between the 1st and 10th pick is far larger than 51st to 60th.

By integrating these values into our picks, we can help separate teams trying to bottom out, as opposed to a middle of the pack team that may happen to have several expiring contracts they trade out. In the table below, we can see who has had the most "valuable" draft years on paper. It's important to understand these numbers assume that all draft years are equivalent in strength and all teams are equally competent in player selection, which of course, are not exactly the case. For the 2015 draft order, I'm using the NHL standings as of February 1st.







What immediately stands out here is the 2015 Sabres and 2010 Panthers drafts are by far the most loaded in terms of value. However, rebuilds often last several years, so lets take a 4 year rolling sum to help tease out some patterns. A team truly in rebuild-mode should have several high-value years [from selling off players] in a row. Philadelphia in 2007 and Montreal in 2012 are examples of data points that signifies an abnormality instead of a rebuild (and thus, we don't want to look into further).







With the green trends, we can start to compare against other teams actively have rebuilt over the years: Chicago, Columbus, Edmonton, Florida, LA, NY Islanders, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, St. Louis, and Washington. What's also interesting is some of the other teams that have been very good without any pick hoarding, like Anaheim, Boston and most significant, Detroit.



So what does this all mean?



- Having a lot of picks is a great start to a rebuild. Probably the most obvious part of this article, but the more chances to pick players, the better the chance you have of building a better team. Picking higher helps as well.



- When you rebuild also matters. It's hard to predict when the next great one will show up, but some teams were unlucky enough to be bad in years where there simply wasn't a ton of high end talent. Florida in the early 2000's and Edmonton recently are two examples.



- Scouting and really "hitting" on your picks matters a ton. It's obviously impossible to predict the future, but doing this well means so much. Let's take a look at Florida's mega draft in 2010. Just to show chance, I put the next drafted player's name in parentheses:



3rd OV: Erik Gudbranson (Ryan Johansen)

19th OV: Nick Bjugstad (Beau Bennett)

25th OV: Quinton Howden (Evgeny Kuznetsov)

33rd OV: John Mcfarland (Dalton Smith)

36th OV: Alex Petrovic (Justin Faulk)

50th OV: Connor Brickley (Calle Jarnkrok)



A slightly different turnout could give us a pretty different Panthers team that could be a serious playoff contender today.



Even though all the points above are somewhat no-brainers, there is one key piece to point out: there hasn't been a bigger full tear down of a team in the salary cap era of the NHL (and it's not even close) than what the Sabres are doing now. For fun, lets look forward into 2016 as the suffering is likely going to continue into next year, to a certain extent. Here's an updated five-year rolling chart to include the full rebuild, with the following assumptions:





- We pick 6th OV next year. Buffalo shouldn't be historically bad again, but still below average.

- Stewart and Stafford get traded for 2nd rounders this year and next. I'm assuming 50th OV on those picks for an average playoff team's spot.

- Buffalo doesn't particularly have any interesting UFA's to be sold next year so I didn't add anything further there.

- I didn't bother adjusting the order of the other teams, outside of dropping ARI/CAR/NJD below EDM.







Two more final insights:



- If you're going to rebuild, it's best to hit bottom than hang in the 5-15 range. You can see from 2007-2012 Phoenix and St Louis had similar paths on paper, but St Louis got elite, higher performing talent.



- One more time for measure: the amount of picks (and pick locations) for Buffalo today is simply amazing. There's almost 25% more "value" being brought in than the next closest team. Asset management will start to become more and more important over the next few years.



Thanks for reading - things look bleak now but it'll be a fun ride coming back up.