I appreciate your position, and I don't think you're entirely off-base here, but there are a few things I wanted to mention:
1) Regarding Hickey, there's no direct indication that he wasn't going to sign, but rather some speculation based on the situation that occurred this summer with him deciding to return for his senior year after Treliving mentioned his signing was "imminent". However, even if you ARE correct, it probably has more to do with the depth of prospects in the Flames organization. Even before drafting Valimaki I had Hickey slotted 4th in the organization after Andersson, Kylington, and Fox. I'm sure he figured that depth would limit his opportunity more than anything else the Flames do in terms of development or opportunity to play.
2) I honestly don't worry about Baertschi and Granlund. They are getting a much bigger opportunity to play on a woeful Canucks team than any other team would give them, and their numbers are likely inflated because of that. Granlund isn't bad at other aspects of the game, but Baertschi is barely passable defensively and will still wilt at the first sign of contact. I don't miss them and neither should you.
3) With regards to the defense prospects, this was the first year the Flames drafted a defenseman in the 1st round since Tom Erixon. It's no coincidence that we haven't had a defenseman fast-track his way to the NHL in that time. I'm of the opinion that defensemen are NHL ready around the age of 22, needing at least 2 seasons of pro play before they can make the jump. The exceptions are high end prospects that are usually drafted in the top 15 of the first round (think Ekblad or Seth Jones).
The further you go down in the draft, the more holes in the game that the player needs to fill. 2nd round picks like Andersson and Kylington are likely not ready until 21 at the earliest. 4th round picks like Kulak are long shots to ever play in the NHL, so the fact he hasn't nailed down a spot yet isn't surprising. He's close, and this is probably his year, but he's had to make a lot of progress over the years to even get to this point, and he'll have to keep improving to stay in the NHL.
Lastly, I think Wotherspoon himself stalled at being an AHL/NHL tweener, and that isn't necessarily on the organization.
4) Players like Jankowski were always going to be developing at a slow burn, so the fact that he's ready after 4 years of college and a season of pro puts him pretty much on track. If he doesn't nail down a spot full time this year, I wouldn't be worried, but he should get 10-20 games to see how close he is. The team should find a way to get him into the lineup at some point if possible.
5) It's the GM's job to make the team as competitive as possible EVERY SINGLE YEAR. That's what Treliving did this year as the window is opening up for this franchise. If a prospect forces a veteran out of the lineup with their play, Treliving will move them along in a trade, but you don't play kids at the detriment of your lineup. I would be concerned about our bottom pairing if we had two rookies like Kulak and Andersson to start the year, or if you had Bartkowski playing with a rookie. Even if you sheltered them, it would be an adventure every night.
That being said, there ARE spots up for grabs (Bouma's buyout says hello...and I think that was to ensure Lazar had a spot on the team), but it's good to have the competition in camp being middling NHLers like Matt Stajan and Matt Bartkowski. They have established that they can handle low levels of competition, but their level of play isn't that much higher than players coming from the AHL. The GM should set the bar somewhere for comparison of prospects to veterans to know whether the prospect is ready or not.
Now I WILL agree that the Flames have not done a great job of developing their prospects over the years. We see that when we trade some of these prospects to other franchises and they fall off the map overnight. Part of that is the draft selection itself, but to see so many promising players fail to progress once they turn pro bothers me as well. Sometimes it's due to injury troubles (Klimchuk, Seiloff) and other times it's due to personal issues (Poirier, D. Ryder) and some are just dinks that the franchise was glad to be rid of due to poor character (Erixon, Howse).
Some teams are better than others at developing talent in house, but I don't see the Flames as being THAT much worse than other teams. At least we're still better at it than Edmonton.
