Quote:
Originally Posted by zamler
When you rebuild, aren't you supposed to put down a foundation? What exactly is the Flames management doing in this regard? Who are we grooming to be the long term backbones of the team? To me the Flames brass is just dithering around with no clear direction, high picks don't help with that kind of approach.
Just ask the Oilers.
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Are you serious?
I would say that drafting Sean Monohan, and then making him an integral part of the team in his first NHL season are good steps in the right direction, and a clear sign that he is one of the "backbones" of which you speak.
It's pretty unrealistic to expect some sort of tangible turnaround and perceivable direction when year one of the rebuild is not even a third of the way complete. Nevertheless, I would argue that there are a number of players already in the lineup (Brodie, Bouma, Baertschi), on the farm (Sieloff, Ramage, and Wotherspoon), in the CHL (Poirier, Klimchuk) and the NCAA (Gaudreau, Gillies, Arnold) who are "being groomed" to be a big part of the team in the future. The problem today is that there is still a lot of time between now and when the team can expect to be competitive again. Some of these players will turn out to be key contributors, others will not, and the Flames will draft a couple dozen more in the process.
This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Having said that, this was a frustrating game that the Flames should have won. However, there is not much that can be done about it now, simply because the team is rebuilding, and because of their current injury situation. One of the difficult parts of rebuilding will be watching this play out. I would suggest that suggesting or expecting major changes based on a result like this are probably over-reactions.