Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
You can't just assume that teams that are tied or ahead of us aren't a threat cause of their reputation.
Arizona and Edmonton have pretty much the same shot as we do at this point.
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Reputation has nothing to do with it. Past performance does.
Arizona and Edmonton have zero, nil, squat, bupkis history of recording a winning record over a season, or even a substantial part of a season, with anything closely resembling their current rosters. The Flames produced a winning record for a full season with the vast majority of their current roster. All the players who played at least 20 games for last year's Flames are still on the team, except Glencross, Byron, and Diaz. None of those three were key contributors, and their replacements (Frolik, Bennett, Hamilton) are at the very least equal to them in ability.
None of this guarantees that the Flames will play as well as they did last year. But it shows that it is a possible outcome; whereas there is nothing in their past records to show that it is possible for Edmonton or Arizona.