Quote:
Originally Posted by wingmaker
How many years do we spot this team before expecting them to be good?
Kind of seems to me that next year they should be expected to be a playoff team. Monahan and Gaudreau are off their entry level contracts, Brodie and Hamilton are both mature defenders who are nearing their peak years. Gio is hopefully still in the productive years of his deal. Bennett will have had time to adjust to the NHL.
Agreed that they need more pieces up front, and even a high draft pick from this spring might not step into the line-up right away, but I think the onus is on management to find some improvements to compete next season, not two or three seasons down the line. This team needs to start being competitive. When we look around the league at teams that have gone through re-builds, the successful ones were competitive pretty quickly after acquiring their high draft picks. If Gaudreau, Monahan, and Bennett are truly the players that will take the Flames far, then it should start to happen quickly. Teams that languish in mediocrity for years with young players inevitably have to start over with different young players.
This team needs a goalie. Treliving needs to find someone. Another wasted year on top of this one and the Flames will be in danger of blowing in the wind along with other perennial also rans like Edmonton, Winnipeg, Columbus, Colorado, etc.
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YOu spot them seasons until they actually have a roster decent enough where you can expect playoff success.
Just look at last night's game:
- Calgary got pushed around all night
- Calgary's top line was on fire and the team still lost
- Calgary's goaltending was only marginally worse than Anaheims
- 3 Blown leads.
These are all symptoms of being a bad team. If you are getting pushed around all night, you aren't dictating the play as much as you might think you are. If your top line is on fire and you still can't win, it means you have no secondary scoring (and are thus a bad team).You should win a game where you score 4 goals, even if 3 of Hiller's were awful, the team still allowed 3 more. If you're blowing multiple leads in a game, it's a sign you can't play any style other than loose. Good teams can 'lock it down', the Flames are gunning it whether they are winning or losing.
If you expected this team to be a playoff team this year or next, your expectations are simply too high.
The top line is good, the rest of the team needs a lot of work.