[Caged Great]

Smith is and always has been a good goalie that was stuck behind some terrible Coyote teams. He even got them to the conference finals that one year when the team in front of him was fairly mediocre.

The Flames have a good team in front of him and with the likelihood that they will be able to add a couple additional threats up on top of what we already have, the team should be in a good position to content for not only the division but also for the top spot in the conference. That would have occurred whether we got Smith, Raanta, Mason, Howard, or anyone who was decent. Even if we went with Elliott and Johnson, that would have occurred as the team was hampered by having no 1st line RW and having 4 #7 D-men playing in roles 4-7 last year until Stone arrived.

Realistically the Flames lineup next year should look like this

Gaudreau-Monahan-New potential acquisition/Ferland
Tkachuk-Backlund-Frolik
Ferland/Versteeg-Bennett-Brouwer/Versteeg/Ferland/Jankowski (depends on expansion draft)
Lazar-Stajan-Chiasson

Giordano-Hamilton
Brodie-#4 like Stone
#4/5 guy like Russell-Andersson/Kulak

Smith
Gillies

That starts to look like a team with few weaknesses. That is a realistic scenario thanks to all the expiring contracts.