Before I start, let me be clear about one thing. Moral victories are overrated. They don’t really matter, and if you have too many of them, they become pretty irrelevant.
What matters, in the grand scheme of things, are wins and losses. The NHL is decided by results, and the NHL is not a development league.
But for a handful of teams that find themselves far outside of the playoff picture, it can very much become a development league for that season. We’re only 14 games into the 2021-22 season. There are still Mike Hoffman (68) games left in the season.