I agree the Bouma deal wasn't a good one. But the Flames are far from cap trouble. Saying we are in cap trouble ignores the fact the cap trouble goes away next season.
We aren't at risk of not being able to sign any assets we truly care about (our core) which is all that matters. The only reason people are even thinking we have cap issues is because, one, some our young core are better quicker than we thought, two, Treliving added an amazing young D piece unexpectedly to our core last year, and three, and this one is must important, the team became competitive quicker than expected. Flames brass gave Treliving to spend during our rebuild so we didn't go full Oiler. Turned out our young guys progressed faster than thought, making fans impatient about our cap situation and impatient about freeing up money right away to fill our gaps.
But all of these are good problems to have. I'm not saying Treliving hasn't made any mistakes, Bouma us a great example. But his body of work has been good to date. Worst case scenario with Colborne is we have to walk away from a decent but not great player, we will survive.
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