[MissTeeks]

Since we are all bored, here's a Ryan Lambert article we can argue about!

https://sports.yahoo.com/calgary-fla...155346387.html

Taken on its face, the high end of the Calgary Flames roster is probably among the best in the Western Conference.

You have Johnny Gaudreau, Mark Giordano, Dougie Hamilton, TJ Brodie, the entire 3M line, Sean Monahan. The good news is that basically all those guys, with the exception of Giordano (very old) and Matthew Tkachuk (very young), are in their mid- to late-20s.

This is what you’d call a team’s “window to win” — the point at which most of a team’s big-ticket players are around the primes of their careers — but the Flames have a very serious problem. You can have a good group at the top of your lineup, but if you don’t support them at the lower end, your ability to actually win while your window is open is limited.

Over the past few years, the Flames have done little to support that core group, making bad bets on outside or simply having good bets not pay off, not really developing prospects at any kind of reasonable rate, not spending to the ceiling, and (perhaps most importantly) getting it very, very wrong in net.

So the team recognized goaltending as a major flaw; it probably cost them 10 or 11 goals over the course of the season, which is the equivalent of about three points in the standings. They gain three points and maybe they avoid the Ducks in the first round, depending upon where they lost them and so on. So in response to this major flaw, their big offseason plan was to go out and get… Mike Smith and Eddie Lack?

Smith has been roughly league-average the past two seasons, but the one before that he was horrific (.904). He also didn’t carry a particularly heavy workload over that time, averaging fewer than 50 appearances per season. Moreover, he’s 35. So the Flames are gambling that a 35-year-old goalie whose career numbers are hardly inspiring will do better than Elliott, which doesn’t seem likely based on the track records of the two goalies in question.

In addition, backup Eddie Lack has a whopping .902 save percentage over the past two seasons, so the idea that he will somehow return to the .917 he posted as a “1b” goalie over two seasons in Vancouver is likewise farfetched.

But that’s what gets into the concerns about the Flames’ depth and lack of developed young players. After the five forwards listed above, and maybe you lump in Kris Versteeg and even Micheal Ferland if you want to be charitable, the Flames have a lot of problems up front this season. They might try to make Troy Brouwer “a thing” on the top line again, but that was a disaster last time out. Matt Stajan is their No. 3 center. Sam Bennett hasn’t come along much at all. They’ll be counting on a rookie or two to chip in offensively.

Only six forwards finished with CF% of more than 50 percent last season, and one of them (Alex Chiasson) doesn’t seem like he’s coming back. Even free of context, this is a concern, but the five they have coming back are the five “core” guys listed above. That’s got to be seen as a big issue.

After all, what can you expect out of Stajan, offensively? How many goals do Freddie Hamilton and Curtis Lazar give you if they’re everyday players? Can Sam Bennett find some way to clear 30 points again, let alone 40? And they certainly didn’t add any offense this summer, instead making their big move to trade for Travis Hamonic, who could excel in a middle-pairing role. But that’s not really what they needed here.

It’s tough to see where this team legitimately stacks up against the rest of that division, let alone the conference, despite all the high-end talent. (And that’s with the acknowledgement that even after all the goals he scores, we still don’t have a ton of evidence Monahan moves the needle in possession).

The fact that this is even a question given the circumstances surrounding the team’s core should give everyone pause.

What, exactly, do they hope to accomplish with this group?

Point is, two or three years from now, they might all look around and realize, “Oh, we could have cobbled something together here.” Instead, there seems to be a strange lack of ambition here, which is weird given the team’s previous ‘Going For It’ culture.