The Reality is that I had no expectations for this year. I wasn't sure where this team would sit or how they'd play. At the end of the day, they're slightly higher then I thought they would be, but I've loved how they've played.
If year one of a rebuild is about establishing culture, then the Flames have accomplished that.
Now I always said that my expectations for next year are when reality kicks in. this team will be worse no matter what the effort level is. But the second year when you cast aside veterans and wrap what's left in a cocoon of Silk and wait a year for a butterfly to emerge can be tough. You need to keep the culture of had work that you established in the first year going. Because if you can't, well look a few hundred KM's up the road and you can see the price for having no culture.
We've been fortunate this year, whether through drafting or through fluke, the prospects in our pool for the most part have shown growth that I didn't think would happen.
We know that the kids can't run on the batteries that they're running on now, next year is going to test them, and half of the prospects that we're talking about now will probably fail.
But there's not much we can do.
Being a hockey fan is like dating a hot chick. You know that at some point she's either going to cheat, or clean out your bank or and pee on your comic collection and take your car, if you go in with low expectations the reality won't kick you in the nads.
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