^^^^
When Iginla signed his contract, he had just come off a 50 goal season and was worth more than 7mil/season. The idea with the 5 year contract was that he would play above it for 3 years, and probably fall below it for the last 2....that's pretty much what happened.
With the Cammalleri deal, we shipped out Bourque, who was totally useless at the time. Cammalleri and Bourque have similarly bad contracts, but Bourque's contract is 2 years longer.
I agree with your point on contract value, but virtually every team has bad contracts and good contracts. Sure we have those bad contracts, but we also have Glencross, Giordano, Stempniak, etc..
The things that really did the Flames in are:
1) The Phaneuf trade. He looks good now. We gave up on a young top pairing defender for no real reason. We got nothing back for a potential franchise player. Imagine how much better this team would be with another true top pairing d-man or an equivalent first line player in his prime.
2) A lack of solid talent coming through the system. The Phaneuf trade contributed to this. So did the Jokinen fiasco. The Erixon debacle. Sutter's drafting strategy of only drafting big farm boys. Drafting goalies in the first two rounds. It all adds up.
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