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Originally Posted by CroFlames
Fair enough. I'm just surprised people look past so many of his accomplishments (Richard, Art Ross, Lindsay, etc) and remember the negatives, which, IMO, aren't even his fault for the most part.
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I wouldn't say I'm looking past his accomplishments. But accomplishments alone don't make any player a favourite player of mine. Play style and personality are huge for me. Iginla as a long time Flame I have a lot of mixed feelings about. Adored him early in his career as he played that power forward style and led the league in goals. Liked him a bit less as he tried to play more of a finesse, speedier style and he lost most of the power in his game. Really got frustrated with him one year where he was literally the worst player on the ice for all of October. Got frustrated with him, management and ownership when it was clear we needed to trade him and rebuild and everybody involved refused to recognize it. Then Feaster trades him for less than what Fleury got, less than what Russell got. Just disastrous. Luckily we've done fairly well at the top end of the draft or the Bouwmeester and Iginla trades might have set the rebuild back a lot more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CroFlames
For instance, he didn't stay too long; the GMs didn't trade him soon enough. The disappointment of losing/subpar seasons doesn't fall to Iggy; it lies with management who built flawed teams around him.
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Management and ownership definitely is to blame for Iginla not being traded soon enough. IMO keeping him here too long tarnished his legacy a bit because the Iginla at the end of his career here was a shell of a his former self but he was still relied on as our top player.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CroFlames
Feaster botched The Trade, and I don't blame Iggy for wanting to play with Sid although it's kinda funny how he shoulda stuck with the initial trade offer. It would have worked out better for him personally. Further to that point, the Boston package wasn't that good either so it's not like it made a huge difference to the Flames overall return. Bartkowski turned out to be a plug.
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I don't blame Iginla for wanting to play with Crosby either. Just frustrating that he misled our management, or lied to them or whatever the heck went on. Why give a 4 team list if it's only 1 team? That is so sleazy. If you only wanna go to PIT then say that all along and keep a consistent story. Just frustrating all around.
In the end I'm more disappointed in ownership and management. For all the intellectual honesty Feaster talked about he really needed to start rebuilding the year he had the "fool me once, fool me twice" quotes and he lacked the intellectual honesty to do so. But the way Iginla's career ended here really tarnished the way I think about him. He was about to be an UFA who could sign with whatever team he wanted. Why not just do one last favour to the Flames and their fans and accept a trade anywhere? In the end Iginla made a selfish choice that looks bad in retrospect and I've judged him on it. I know I'm probably in the minority on this. He had a NMC so he was perfectly within his rights to say only PIT but as a fan of the Flames its well within my rights to think that the 4 team list, no only PIT was kind of a dick move.
Anyways great player and a better human being. I know most people are still big fans of his and I think thats awesome. But I had been waiting for years for that Iginla trade to get us a key component for our rebuild and unless Klimchuk turns into something great we really got SFA for him. As a fan of Fleury, the Fleury trade, and Regehr and knowing how important Regehr was for us I was hoping for a similar trade. Feaster and Iginla's NMC combined to let us down and basically get the franchise next to nothing for its former franchise player. With Kiprusoff not netting us anything either and Bouwmeester being traded for .50 on the dollar Feaster failed to acquire many pieces for our rebuild from our former top players. Luckily he didn't trade away guys like Gaudreau and Brodie. Feaster had the chance to accelerate our rebuild but he failed to do so.
Thank god we've been lucky in the draft getting Monahan, Bennett and Tkachuk cause otherwise this rebuild would be looking pretty terrible.