Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
A deeply rooted culture of mediocrity.
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I came to post the exact same thing.
This culture of mediocrity permeates so much of this franchise. From our President and CEO, to some of the most pathetic General Managers putting a boring product on the ice, to the long list of middling coaches to the extensive list of players on the ice, to an almost 25 year run of awful drafting. Just so much about this team is average or just plain bad.
This hockey club has been spinning its wheels for over 20 years. They have won their division ONCE since 1995. I imagine many of the posters here weren't even born then! But this USED to be a proud hockey franchise that was committed to winning and had a winning culture, this team had hall of famers, was stacked top to bottom, won divisions and consistently made the playoffs. Flash forward and all of sudden being subjected to the Young Guns era which said that being a losing team was OK if you were a Calgary Flame and basically ushered in two decades of an extremely mediocre product, truly a sad situation for a once proud franchise.
Celebrating the signing of Mikael Backlund is emblematic of just so much that is wrong with this team. Nothing against Backlund, he's a pretty good player and he would be an absolute stud of a third line centre on a team with
actual Stanley Cup aspirations, yet here we are staring at six more years of what is a very average two way centre who
likely won't even score 20 goals this season. Do we honestly see Mikael Backlund as an indispensable piece on a team that will likely not even make the playoffs? Can we not expect more as a fanbase? We need to stop thinking that these extremely average NHLers are core pieces, from top to bottom of this type of thinking has to change.
We went from having an elite winger with no real elite centre with the Iginla teams to having an elite winger with no real elite centre with Gaudreau. You need an elite centre to win a stanley cup, full stop. This team doesn't have one, and until they get one we are going to see the same mediocre results.
We also need a top coach, it's no surprise that the Calgary Flames are usually the last NHL stop for our list of terrible coaches: Jim Playfair, the rotting husk of Mike Keenan, Brent Sutter, Bob Hartley and the soon to be gone Glen Gulutzan, they get their shot in Calgary, and no one else wants to touch them because it's so blatantly obvious they are not NHL-level coaches. In the last few years Barry Trotz, Bruce Boudreau, Randy Carlyle, Peter Laviolette and Alain Vigneault have been available, yes I realize it takes two to tango and there needs to be mutual interest but in my opinion the Flames should have been offering big money to these guys and done whatever it takes to get them. If by some miracle Quenville becomes available this summer, which I don't think he will, the Flames should be all in on him.
The drafting has improved slightly and there are promising pieces in Fox and Valimaki but the fact that Sam Bennett looks to be a total bust really really hurts. I am not sure how many more times I can watch Bennett lose a battle, fall on the ice, miss the net by 5 feet shooting from the slot, or turn the puck over. It sucks because we needed him to be a stud and he's not.
So in summary, we need an elite centre, improve drafting and coaching dramatically which likely means big change from the very top all the way down.