If our city's collectively scarred in any context, it'd be these two ways:

1. The steel mills once closed.
2. The sports fans are terrorized by rebuilds.

And honestly, I'm not sure which scars are uglier anymore.

I mean, we got over the mills, obviously. Not one left inside Pittsburgh proper. And the major industries here now are medicine, finance, higher education, modern tech such as AI and robotics and, of course, tourism. We came out way stronger, and now our population's bouncing back to boot.

This other thing, though ... man, it'll take a few more decades. Or however one might track time in increments of five-year plans.

Seriously, we're the worst at this.

I don't solely blame the Pirates, believe it or not. Sure, they've set the world's record for sheer length of a rebuild, now drowning deep into their fourth consecutive decade with no Ben Cherington firing in sight. But the Penguins have done, I'd say, almost as much damage in this psychological regard if only because of the magnitude of their models.

Need to get Mario Lemieux?

Awesome, so here's the plan: Eddie Johnston drives up to Mount Washington one night in 1984 to catch a few of his best players -- the key word being few -- out past curfew. And rather than ignoring it, as most any exec would, he banishes a bunch of them to Baltimore, home of their AHL affiliate because ... oh, you know. There was no lottery back then.

Final record: 16-58-6. Result: Mario.

Need another survival plan after a bankruptcy, Mario having to buy the team himself out of owed money, Jaromir Jagr having to score a single spectacular goal to fend off a possible move to Kansas City, then a grand selloff of Jagr and almost everyone else over 25 before a salary cap was installed?

Awesome, so this was that plan: Draft one of the greatest goaltenders in NHL history first overall in Marc-Andre Fleury, draft the greatest No. 2 overall pick in NHL history the next year in Evgeni Malkin, then, just for fun, win a lottery to draft one of the greatest players of any category in NHL history in Sidney Crosby!

This, my friends, is what we know. It's what we've seen.

But this also isn't reality. There's a reason precious few franchises spanning professional sports have achieved what this one has over a half-century, there's a reason only one's been blessed by events like those above, and there are voluminous reasons we seldom see total-teardown rebuilds in any sports anymore. No one this side of Buffalo's stupid enough to even try to strip it all the way down, and the Sabres scarcely count since they're stuck in their sorry state into perpetuity. Everywhere else, the execs put forth plans that have to stick within the cap's ceiling/floor range of roughly $20 million and, before long, have to put out results.

I'm begging, please, everyone, once and for all, stop it with the total-teardown nonsense.

This, what Kyle Dubas and the Penguins just did now in this NHL Draft over the weekend here in our Downtown, is a real, live rebuild, circa 2025.

And I dare say, even while acknowledging I wouldn't know much about a Ben Kindel from a Bill Zonnon from a Will Horcoff, I'm all in favor of the first trio of first-rounders for this franchise since Mario, Doug Bodger and Roger Belanger in 1984. There's nothing healthier amid a rebuild of any scale than a multiple-point infusion of first-round talent, and Kindel, in particular, arrives with the most sorely needed trait in natural scoring skill.

More, more, more.

And to that end, there was more, from the above three on Day 1 to a total of 13 -- THIRTEEN! -- by the end of Day 2! The most in 31 years! The result of so many Dubas trades over the past couple years, and the past couple days, that it'd take a tree's worth of branches to track all their roots.

They won't all pan out. They wouldn't in any sport, certainly not in hockey, where 17-year-olds are being plucked from all over the planet, often with little in common even on the ice. Different approaches. Different systems. Different everything. But that's why quantity was always going to be just as important as quality in this process.

I loved how Wes Clark, the Penguins' vice president of player personnel, worded it after Day 2 of the eight forwards, four defenseman and one goaltender: "They're not all going to work out. But the more lottery tickets you have increases your chances to hopefully hit."

Yep. Max Talbot was selected in 2002 in a round that no longer exists, the eighth, at 234th overall. I vividly recall wondering why I was even wasting my time to go interview him after the announcement, but I relented, went to ask a few questions, found him every bit as engaging and confident as one might imagine he'd have been even at that age.

Soon enough ...

... he was worthy of superstar treatment.

Patric Hornqvist was selected dead last by the Predators three years later, seventh and final round, 230th overall, making him the unofficial so-called Mr. Irrelevant.

Ask Pekka Rinne's backside about Hornqvist's irrelevance:

In Nashville, no less.

"You never forget," Hornqvist told me on the ice that night, looking up at the rafters as if to remind himself where he was. "You never forget when people don't believe in you."

It takes volume. The Penguins were never, ever, ever going to alter their trajectory on the Jim Rutherford model of passing out first-rounders like Jujubes on Halloween. Jim did what was needed, and he'll be respected forever for it, but it had to be reversed. Hard.

This is the way.

All 13 -- my God, it's still THIRTEEN the second time I reference it -- of those picks will be in town by Monday, prepared to meet with us media types and partake in other team formalities. Just like Max did all those years ago, same as every other kid in his class. And when they arrive, in the symbolic sense, they'll be met by a good group of other kids. Not a ton. Nowhere near enough. But I'm OK with a theoretical starting point of Ville Koivunen, Rutger McGroarty, Harrison Brunicke, Tristan Broz and Sergei Murashov.

That's a modern rebuild. Not all of the older guys need to be flushed away and, in fact, they really can't. I'm convinced that keeping within the cap range would've been among Dubas' motivations, for instance, in trading on this Day 2 to acquire a 30-year-old defenseman, Connor Clifton, from the Sabres. Because his $3.33 million cap hit helps keep the team hit into healthy territory. So will other free-agent signings to come this summer.

So will the rightful retention, by the way, of both Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell.

Come on, no way I wasn't bringing them up.

I'll say it anew, with even greater gusto: Barring some blow-off-the-roof offer, Dubas has no reason to not keep them both. They're affordable, they're barely on the bad side of 30, they love being here, and their continued presence would help keep a certain center of theirs far more holistically invested in helping push this process along.

The kids are here. Too many to count, actually. So now, show 'em how it's done.

Dubas won't pinpoint how he sees this phases of the Penguins' rebuild unfolding, and I understand that. Even the most promising prospects tend not to enjoy linear progress. There are injuries, other setbacks, outright disappointments. For all he knows, they can all go boom, all go bust.

But the truth, as Clark suggested, tends to fall in between.

"I knew coming in to take the job that this was eventually going to be the path we had to go down," Dubas would say this weekend of the rebuild as a whole. "You know what the mandate was at the start, to try to give the team one last boost in the summer of 2023 and, then, at some point, we're going to have to make the call to go into this mode, to try to build, to transition to that next era of the team contending again."

He then referenced the state of the Penguins' system, both real and perceived. Not everyone in the industry's a believer, from what I know, of what was already here. One Canadian writer mused a couple days ago that there won't be contention in Pittsburgh again until the middle of the next decade.

"We know what people say about the prospect pool and how long of a road people think it's going to be," Dubas continued, "but every ounce of our focus is about getting the team back
to contention as urgently as possible. So I know that that can, at times, confuse. But we don't sit down and say it's going to be X amount of years. What can we do to help bring the team back to contention as quickly as possible, and then execute and try to get us there?"

This isn't the end, but I'll continue to insist it's an inspired start.