3 Reasons Why Dynasties Are So Rare in the NHL

It's not just the salary cap...

In the NHL, dynasties are pretty rare.

The introduction of the salary cap in 2005-06 was a big reason for that. You can’t buy your way to multiple championships anymore.

“Dynasty” is a loose term, but generally, you’re looking at multiple championships and sustained success over several seasons. With that said, how do teams form a dynasty in the modern day? Why is it such a rarity?

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Reason One: Building a Championship Core Is Hard

The most important part here may also be the hardest. To win championships, teams must first build a championship core. Retaining that core long-term is the second step, which is more challenging than it sounds.

First and foremost, a championship core is one you can lean on to win a Stanley Cup. Some recent examples that went all the way:

Florida Panthers, 2024: Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Gustav Forsling

Vegas Golden Knights, 2023: Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, Shea Theodore

Colorado Avalanche, 2022: Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Mikko Rantanen, Devon Toews

Tampa Bay Lightning 2021, 2020: Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Victor Hedman, Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos

All of these players were key contributors for championships. If you remove one of them from the equation (sans Stamkos in 2020), going the distance is simply not feasible. These were top-tier players at their respective positions.

It’s not easy to acquire three or more of these athletes. Each one of these cores had a first or second-overall pick on it, for starters—superstar talent rarely falls out of the first few selections. “Tanking” isn’t a cheat code, though. Expert-level drafting and trading is a must to construct a group that good—not just losing on purpose.

Take the Panthers, for example. To get Reinhart, they had to pay a price—top prospect Devon Levi and a first-round pick. At the time, mind you, Reinhart only had one season above 50 points scored. So it was a gamble.

Though they don’t spend a lot of their 5-on-5 minutes together, Reinhart likely wouldn’t be the goal-scoring machine he is today without Tkachuk. To land him, Florida traded Jonathan Huberdeau, who was coming off a 115-point season, MacKenzie Weegar, who was playing at a No. 1 defenseman level, and a first-round pick.

The savviness aspect comes into play with a player like Forsling, who was a waiver pickup turned No. 1 defender. Barkov, perhaps the best of them all, was a second-overall pick in 2013.

That’s just one team. Sounds hard, right? Well, it gets better. Assembling a core with that kind of firepower is only part of what is needed for a dynasty.

The other part of it is that a core needs to be young enough to “run it back” year after year. A dynasty doesn’t mean being good for a couple of seasons—it means being a consistent threat. So, these players have to be good and relatively young. That’s not even mentioning the salary cap aspect, where you may get priced out of extending all of your guys.