Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruttiger
You don’t have a hope in hell of coming out of this gracefully. Your team is full of nobodies, your farm club is full of never will bes, and the picks who haven’t even been made yet will be wasted on the Mark Jankowskis of the world.
Yours Truly,
Oilers Fan
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The problem with the reasoning behind this letter is that the author makes the mistake of assuming that the Flames management will be as inept as the Oilers management. It might turn out that they are. It might also turn out that the Flames scouts knew what they were doing when they drafted Jankowski. Time will tell.
That being said, even teams with proven records building through the draft make mistakes. All of Chicago's first round draft picks didn't pan out either. To hold up Jankowski (who is yet to be tested in the NHL) as a failure and declare an organization as being doomed is ridiculous. That would be like claiming that the Chicago Blackhawks are a bad organization because they drafted Jack Skille seventh over all.
As it is, I'm not prepared to abandon hope. The Flames have three picks in what is expected to be an unusually deep draft. I'm okay with that right now. They will pick three players not named Gagner, Plante, and Nash. They will pick three players that their scouts think will be potential NHL players sometime in the future. It's too soon to assume that they won't be.
Misery loves company. It's clear the Oilers fan base has a good reason to be miserable. I'm not happy about the way the Flames have been managed over the past few years, but that doesn't mean we're doomed to repeat the Oilers failure. But, like I wrote earlier, time will tell. Unless the letter writer has a crystal ball, his arguments about what the future will bring are pretty much without any merit.