The Flames could very easily pick at the top of the draft if they had any desire to. It'd be extremely simple. Their own hubris is the fundamental issue here.
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The Dallas model can be boiled down to a very simple statement: "Draft better than everyone else".
Something interesting I noticed is if you look at Dallas' draft history since Nill took over as GM in 2013, they've only drafted one player after pick 50 who has played 100+ games in the NHL. That was Nick Paul in 2013 -- and he was traded to Ottawa a year later in the Spezza deal, before he signed his first contract.
I hope the lesson Conroy takes from this isn't just to draft better, but also to hoard first and second round draft picks. Don't trade your own away, and acquire other teams' whenever you can.
Calgary's scouting staff has done a good job with the picks they've had, but it's tough when you don't have the high picks.
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They also drafted Bergeron, effectively a generational defensive player in the 2nd round in 2003 - which I would deem as outside of the modern era (defined as being the salary cap introduction -> present day), coupled with quite possibly the single greatest free agency signing in the history of the NHL? Tough to recreate that.
The fact that people point to Boston in 2011 and St. Louis in 2019 means that what? There’s one outlier every 10 years, and even then the fact that they’re outliers is even debatable.
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It's genuinely concerning to me that some people think we have a solid foundation to build around.
It isn't "magic beans" to draft a top player. Almost every good team has drafted one of these top players. The Flames have never historically been bad enough to do it, but we can certainly get a top 5 next year with this roster. And probably the year after.
They also drafted Bergeron, effectively a generational defensive player in the 2nd round in 2003 - which I would deem as outside of the modern era (defined as being the salary cap introduction -> present day), coupled with quite possibly the single greatest free agency signing in the history of the NHL? Tough to recreate that.
The fact that people point to Boston in 2011 and St. Louis in 2019 means that what? There’s one outlier every 10 years, and even then the fact that they’re outliers is even debatable.
Boston had a run of drafting impact players in the second and third rounds with Bergeron, Krejci, Marchand, Lucic as well as pulling off the greatest two UFA singings of the decade in Chara and Thomas.
The general theme for the Boston/Dallas model is to draft really well.
The Flames could very easily pick at the top of the draft if they had any desire to. It'd be extremely simple. Their own hubris is the fundamental issue here.
Lazy easy take setting up an arrangement for players to lose.
If building a team was about high picks Edmonton wouldn’t be a joke & the Sabres would have played a playoff game in the last decade.
Having Iginla as a resource is massive. He’s seen more players for a longer period of time who are eligible for the upcoming draft than any other person working in hockey, and it’s not even remotely close.
Between him & Conroy, they know what’s they’re doing.
Neither are losers so they would likely quit the minute they were told losing was ok, and that their playing to win “hubris” wasn’t acceptable.
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Lazy easy take setting up an arrangement for players to lose.
If building a team was about high picks Edmonton wouldn’t be a joke & the Sabres would have played a playoff game in the last decade.
Having Iginla as a resource is massive. He’s seen more players for a longer period of time who are eligible for the upcoming draft than any other person working in hockey, and it’s not even remotely close.
Between him & Conroy, they know what’s they’re doing.
Neither are losers so they would likely quit the minute they were told losing was ok, and that their playing to win “hubris” wasn’t acceptable.
Except the Oilers have the core to win. They just don't know how to build around them, and haven't gotten a playoff ready goalie.
You should be able to go far and have a chance at a cup with a core of McDavid and Draisaitl.
I trust conroy and iggy. They are winners and know what it takes to win. Having legendary winners (at almost every level) will foster a championship mindset.
Lazy easy take setting up an arrangement for players to lose.
If building a team was about high picks Edmonton wouldn’t be a joke & the Sabres would have played a playoff game in the last decade.
Having Iginla as a resource is massive. He’s seen more players for a longer period of time who are eligible for the upcoming draft than any other person working in hockey, and it’s not even remotely close.
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Conroy basically said that during his presser yesterday.
First, Iggy coached against many of the kids in the eastern US and Canada when he was coaching Tij in Boston, then he has seen the western kids when they moved back to BC.
He probably saw some of the draft eligible kids when they were 11 or 12 years old.
I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was during the part of the presser where they asked about how much Iggy has been involved with the draft prep because Tij is one of the top prospects.
Starts around 23:50...
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The Flames could very easily pick at the top of the draft if they had any desire to. It'd be extremely simple. Their own hubris is the fundamental issue here.
You seem to think that no other team is trying to pick at the top of the draft.
Is it ‘hubris’ not to have the first team in the cap era to fail to win 20 games? That was San Jose.
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Teams like the 2024 Sharks are vanishingly rare, though. When you've been in the league for 44 years and have still never made a top-3 pick, that's a philosophical decision in and of itself. I get their motivations for not wanting to be bad, but they could be.
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Teams like the 2024 Sharks are vanishingly rare, though. When you've been in the league for 44 years and have still never made a top-3 pick, that's a philosophical decision in and of itself.
Who is it that made this philosophical decision, and how have they managed to be directing the organization for 44 straight years without ever putting their name on anything publicly?
You conveniently ignore the fact that for a considerable stretch of time, the top 3 picks were all awarded by lottery. What ‘philosophical decision’ would have caused the team to win a lottery?
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That was a very, very short period of time, though. For the vast majority of the lottery's existence, it has only determined the top pick or, more recently, the top two picks.
I don't think it takes much deliberation to tie the Flames' unwillingness to be truly bad with the way they handled coming out of the late 1990s. The people who finance the team obviously don't want the team to fall into the same dire financial straits that it faced back in that timeframe. And there's no question that what San Jose is doing right now is particularly extreme (and their attendance has suffered greatly).
But franchise valuations are soaring across the board — the Coyotes just sold for $1.2 billion — and the Flames have already succeeded in leveraging the age of the Saddledome into a publicly-funded replacement.
I dunno. It feels like the Flames sometimes try harder to not lose too much than to actually win anything of consequence.
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Sharks, Hawks, and a couple others this year. But nevertheless, my point is that the Flames have shown over the last ~15 years that they are always eager to find a shortcut rather than deliberately building a base of young players that is as strong or stronger than any other in the league. And it hasn't gotten them anywhere.
Why is it that they feel they don't need to do what so many other teams do?
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Sharks, Hawks, and a couple others this year. But nevertheless, my point is that the Flames have shown over the last ~15 years that they are always eager to find a shortcut rather than deliberately building a base of young players that is as strong or stronger than any other in the league. And it hasn't gotten them anywhere.
Why is it that they feel they don't need to do what so many other teams do?
Strike ‘don't need’, replace with ‘can't afford’.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. There are two kinds of billionaires, and two corresponding kinds of big businesses. There are those that take risks and establish new markets for new products, and there are those that eliminate risks and consolidate existing industries. Nearly all the Canadian NHL owners made their money the second way, not the first. Risk-aversion is in their blood.
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