[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by JohnnySkittles

Posts such as New Era & Cleveland Steam Whistle. Just garbage that once certain players are no longer a Flame he's awful, good riddance, personality issues, etc. Those type of things. (ex: Iggy, Tangs, Sven)

That's just not true. For every one of the three examples you listed, there have been numerous posters for a very long time who have been critical, and always with the same criticism:

· Iginla: Inadvertently contributed to a tension between coaches/players, and was instrumental in promoting the in-room culture that was not healthy.
· Tanguay: Visibly affected by his role on the team, and was non-committal to playing a certain way.
· Baertschi: Visibly affected by his on-ice mistakes in games; there were extensive reports since 2012 that he potentially had entitlement issues—his whole response to being included in the prospects camp and rookie tournament the following year were well documented, and quite troubling.

Originally Posted by JohnnySkittles

Saying 'cancer' was more-so just a one worded phrase to collectively encompass the things I labelled above...

But YOU are the only one who used this inflammatory word. The term is a gross exaggeration of what CSW and New Era are getting at.

But finally—and for the record—this idea that Baertschi was the cause of some problems in Adirondack (this is what I take "cancer" in this context to mean, which IS NOT what ANY other posters in the last 24 hours have been saying) is not without basis:

This is a transcript of Elliot Friedman's appearance on the FAN 960 morning show from 3 Nov 2014:

Originally Posted by Elliot Friedman

"The timing of it was a little bit interesting for me because in doing my show prep on the week, I happened to speak to three teams that had seen him play in Adirondack. And the review on him was universally negative. They were like, 'He’s not really competing hard, he’s not really playing that well.' There were beginning to wonder what the future would be and as a couple of guys said to me there’s no way Calgary can be happy with this.

"The thing is, I looked into it. I’ll give the Calgary guys credit. They really stood up for him. They said, 'Look, here’s a guy who is not going to be happy with going back to the American Hockey League. Here’s a guy who wants to be in the NHL, feels he should be in the NHL.' And they understood that initially when he went back down to the AHL that he was going to be disappointed.

"What they really fought back against was the fact that he was a negative guy or that he was causing a problem down there. There have been teams in the past, who they get a guy in there American Hockey League team and if he’s negative, they’re like, 'We cannot have this here.'

"Because I know Calgary feels they have some decent young players there. They don’t want negativity around them. So they really fought back against that belief. They said, 'Look, he’s not scoring. But the idea that he’s been a drain on people or he’s being negative around people – we’re going to defend him against that because we don’t believe that to be the case.'

"And they said they felt in the last week he was starting to play better and getting going, but just wasn’t getting any luck.

"So the thing is too, and this is the thing I always check, is when is the player eligible for waivers. Because that’s usually when a team has to really make a call on someone. 'Do we want to risk losing him for nothing?' And I don’t believe he’s eligible for waivers until next season.

"So I think the Flames still feel like they have some time. I know there’s a lot of debate about whether or not he’s a Brian Burke player. But the one thing I learned on the weekend is that this team is really fighting hard against what appears to be the position from outside that this guy hasn’t tried hard since he’s gotten back to the American Hockey League."

So, from this it is clear that the perception of people in hockey and from other teams was that Baertschi was a problem for the Flames. To the Flames credit, they did everything they could to support the player, and to ensure that he would succeed. He didn't follow through.

*EDIT* In case you missed it (weird that you didn't see this just three posts above your response), I borrowed AC's link to another Friedman statement about the situation:

"Even worse, a few teams that saw him were exceedingly unimpressed, with one suggesting he wouldn’t want Baertschi near his other prospects."

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/3...for-ted-nolan/