Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleveland Steam Whistle
What difference does it make how many games he's got. You claim wrong philosophical direction which couldn't be more wrong. It would be if we gave up the pick for a mature player, but we didn't.
Totally fair if you think the 2nd in this years draft would be a better young talent than Lazar. But it's not a "wrong philosophical" move for the club. They swapped young developing asset for young developing asset.
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They swapped flexibility for someone elses mostly developed asset.
The flames used a 2nd round pick as part of the Hamilton acquisition. The Flames now have 5 picks in 7 rounds in the upcoming draft and if they re-sign Stone and Elliott they will have 4 picks next year.
As Textcritic says, if the flames are going to compete in the next 5 years they are going to do with with the talent already in the system. Well, if that's the case, the Flames are in huge f'ing trouble because they don't have anything in the system, all their bluechippers are contributing NHL'ers.
The Flames are goign to have to go out and buy a significant asset at some point and the philosophical direction should be accumulating a quantity of picks in order to make trades to acquire impact players without having the complication of sending significant salary the other way.
Lazar isn't some massive mistake, but I don't see much difference between acquiring him and acquiring Shinkaruk, except one was significantly more costly to acquire than the other in my opinion. You're banking on an improbable turnaround to justify the expense of the acquisition. What it does for the Flames is it removes flexibility in future acquisitions which have the potential to have a greater total impact on the franchise.
I don't hate the player, I just hate the fact the Flames are once again deficit spending with draft picks. You'd think they would have learned their lesson by now.