[Erick Estrada]

The thing about the scorched earth rebuilds is that they take time and half of the time they never work out as planned. They are off to a good start with their prospects but there's no franchise goaltender or defenseman in the organization. Sometimes the final pieces are never found and it only takes a couple of bad moves to crumble the foundation. There's promise but right now it's all based on following an imperfect formula and crossing your fingers it turns out.

Flames are still a promising rebuilding team but it was only a few seasons ago they had one of the top prospect bases in the league with the league gushing over guys in the pipeline like Baertschi, Monahan, Poirier, Klimchuk, Ortio, Gillies, etc. and only a few years later Monahan and Ortio have graduated but who's gushing about the other guys today? Prospects aren't a sure thing.