I'm more optimistic that ownership and management will start trading veterans, including Iginla, for young players and draft picks because I have followed the same path as they did. The first two years out of the playoffs, I figured that injuries and some bad luck meant that they just needed a couple of pieces and a better performance from what they had. Last trade deadline I was basically where Feaster was at wanting to trade a whole bunch of underperformers until he mysteriously reversed the position (may very well have been ownership telling him that they wanted to give the players another shot, but could also have been that they were not being offered anything worth breaking the team up over). Now, this year I am resigned to the fact that the team simply is not good enough, it is not going to improve next season organically, and the cupboard is not superior to that of other teams that are currently better on the ice.
I think that the owners really like the players. They think that it is a group of good guys and they wanted to believe that they just needed to put it together and held out hope for it to happen for too long. They paid a premium in the summer to bring in some talent to help them out and it still wasn't enough.
I think they realize that now is the time to regroup because the current push is a failure. They have gone quiet because they have been having internal discussions on how to approach a rebuild from a marketing perspective and also because they do not want to do anything that would lower the value of their assets.
It's not going to be a fire sale because there is a cap floor, but I anticipate that this years playoffs will be interesting for Flames fans because we will be watching a few of our favorite players chasing the cup in different colors and the draft will be really interesting because the Flames will be picking very high and hopefully several times in the first round.
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