[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Kovaz

Fine, ignore Dallas then. Colorado, San Jose, and LA are also flawed teams that are in the playoffs, and if one of them misses it's because Dallas passed them.



Of the players you mentioned:

Glass and Hamilton played a total of about 130 minutes in 17 games allowing a total of 4 goals against
Versteeg has played 24 games, with 4 goals for and 5 against
Jagr's lines had 12 goals for and 6 against in his 22 games.
Brouwer's played just about every game and he's -1
Bartkowski has played 14 games, with 4 goals for and 7 against

For this flames team, it's not about goals against, it's about goals for. That group collectively has scored 10 goals on the year. 10 goals for in a collective 135 games. That is simply not good enough. That's how you can have a player in the top 10 in scoring and as a team be all the way down in 22nd.

Most teams don't have a great winning record when their top lines don't produce, but the Flames are more reliant on their top line than most teams in the league. They don't have the luxury of exceptional point production from the second line, so it has to be by committee. That's where things break down.

So the players who weren't good enough add up to a total impact of -3 goals. Hardly a season-ruining performance from the bottom of the roster. If that's "by far the biggest weakness on the team", you're in pretty good shape.

But since you're blaming our poor season on the lack of NHL talent, surely the players without NHL talent would be the ones getting out-scored, right? That's why I brought up Backlund and Frolik. If we're losing because of a lack of talent, surely the guys at -15 and -12 are the culprits?

Make no mistake about it, down years from Frolik and Backlund are having a huge impact on the roster. They are examples of the lack of depth. You'd hope someone would be able to take a bit of the load off them both defensively and offensively but the team is lacking options. At this point last year, Backlund had 8 more goals than he does this year. If Backlund is on the same scoring pace, the Flames are probably in the playoffs this year. He's 8 goals and 9 points off last years pace, with a +14 to a -16. I know you probably looked at the numbers, I'm not trying to patronize.

This may shock you, but I don't like the Backlund contract extension and I don't think he's good enough offensively to be a second line centre on a contending team. Frolik falling off the earth this season due to injury is a major factor in that, but again, not enough offense to be a legit top 6 player in my mind. 23 points from your second line RW isn't good enough.

I'm not trying to suggest there's an obvious answer here with no drawbacks. If there was, there wouldn't be nearly as much arguing going on here. But chemistry isn't a predictable thing, and they've tried so few options that we just don't know if the good outweighs the bad for some of them. Sometimes there are combinations out there that can be more than the sum of their parts.

In my opinion, GG gets unfair blame for not 'mixing up the lines' enough. The team wins games based on the performance of the first line, full stop. So, you can't really mess with that line unless you're willing to entertain losing the game. WHen Ferland went down with injury, bennett got a spot up there, and the first game he played there against arizona was good, bennett scored a goal. But then....the whole line didn't register a point for 5 games. So, in my opinion if you're pushing for a playoff spot, that experiment is over. Maybe if you're not pushing so hard, if you've identified this as a development season, you try different line combos for longer. The Flames don't ever have those kinds of seasons though, every season is a push, so every season needs maximum winning effort.

You can't split up the second line for basically the same reason as the first. Bennett or Ferland there instead of Tkachuk has been less than stellar. So was Brouwer who has seemingly stunk up the joint everywhere.

This is what I mean by lack of options. You can't both try and win every night at the same time as changing the line combinations that are working. You can't give Bennett time on the top line if you also want your best chance at winning games. And again, if this season was a holding pattern season (like last year should've been treated), then maybe you have the freedom to play around a bit more and try different things out, but that's now how this franchise works. It's go time.

My point is that when the team as a whole isn't succeeding, is the best course of action really to throw our hands in the air and say "we're not good enough!" At least if we'd tried a bunch of different things and failed at all of them, we'd be able to more confidently say the roster isn't good enough. As it stands, I'm terrified of a lot of potential moves that may happen this summer, because I think there's a good chance that the guy we move out dramatically outperforms his trade value once he's in a better situation.

Well, that comes down to fan expectations. The Flames are right about where I thought they would be; falling out of the playoffs due to injuries that roster depth can't cover for. They don't have the depth like other teams to cover for their injuries, and they burned basically all of their tradeable assets just to get to be a team on the bubble.

San Jose can weather the Thornton injury in part because they have better forward depth, but also in part because they didn't move a ####load of draft picks this summer preventing them from improving the roster with Evander Kane down the stretch when the injury bug bit. The Flames are a bubble team after moving a wheelbarrow full of picks. Since the end of last season, the Sharks by comparison have moved out a 5th, 7th, 1st and 4th, and acquired a 6th, 2nd and 4th rounder. If Kane doesn't sign with them, that 1st becomes a 2nd and the Sharks are basically neutral in draft picks over the course of a year, while still being more competitive than the Flames.

A lot of those arguments don't really matter when evaluating the quality of the roster right now.

They absolutely do. They tell you in a general sense where the roster is in terms of talent and organizational momentum.

Who cares where we were in the standings two years ago? That year, Winnipeg was 25th, Columbus was 27th, and Toronto was 30th. All three are good teams today that will make the playoffs.

Uh...Those three teams picked in the top 3 in the draft, picking 2 of the best players in the league. That was the second top 10 pick in as many years for Columbus, who now have a 14 goal 20 year old defender on the roster who scored 47 points in his rookie year. Yes, Tkachuk is awesome and the Flames nabbed him in that draft, but to put it in perspective, Laine has played 2 more games than Tkachuk and scored 42 more goals. Columbus basically walked away from back to back drafts with 2 tkachuks. The Flames would absolutely be right there with them in my opinion if they'd done the same. If the Flames had drafted Laine and Kyle Connor in back to back drafts, they'd be a contender.

So, I hope you can see how previous history for a franchise can tell you a lot about how the team will perform in the here and now and into the future as well.

And again, when the majority of our core was acquired in the last 3-4 years, why does it matter that we missed the playoffs 6 years ago?

Because 6 years ago the Flames only made 5 draft picks in the whole draft. Yes, they walked away with Gaudreau, but they didn't walk away from that draft with anything else, and for a team lacking scoring punch, that's a huge problem. What does it tell you about the organization that in a season where they missed the playoffs they deficit spent on picks? Does that look anything like this year to you? Does that suggest some kind of organizational flaw where a team picks as high as 13th and only has 4 more picks that entire draft? The year before that, they didn't draft until 64th overall, despite again having missed the playoffs. The Flames are on their third GM by that time and still doing similar things.

Does that sound familiar at all? This year the Flames aren't slated to draft until the 4th round. 90th something. Last year, their first pick was 16th and their next pick was 109th. Is there something in the Glenmore resevoir?

Should Chicago feel good about where their team is at right now?

No, but again, they were maybe the best team in the league for the last decade, have 3 cups over that span and were going to struggle predictably this year after losing Hossa and Hjalmmerson and having their defensive core age out of competitiveness. They'd probably still be in the thick of it though without a serious injury to their starting goalie. Where would Calgary be if they'd only gotten 28 games from Mike Smith this year instead of 52?

They've made the playoffs 9 years in a row.

And they've made 6 more draft picks than the Flames in the last 3 years. They won the cup as recently as 4 seasons ago.

Should we be writing off Boston? They've missed 3 of the last 4 years. How about Winnipeg? They've also missed in 6 of 7 and haven't won a playoff game in franchise history.

These comparisons are getting more and more bizarre. Boston was a presidents trophy candidate until they lost perhaps their best player with a broken Foot for 11 games and counting and are still third in the league. What kind of goofus would write them off because they missed the playoffs two years ago? Do you think I would be writing the Flames off if they were the 3rd best team in the league this year just because 2 years ago they missed?

Imagine this Flames roster without Monahan for 11 games. Where would they be?

(The Bruins have also drafted more than the Flames over the last 3 years, including SIX 1st round picks)

As for our scoring - obviously that was a concern. That's the biggest weakness our team has. But the point I'm trying to make is having flaws doesn't immediately make you a bad team. Every team has flaws. You have to quantify those things and evaluate them in the context of the team as a whole. Obviously we weren't going to score 300 goals this year. But we were still roughly average last year, and we scored more goals than either of LA's cup winners. 220 goals is plenty if you're great defensively.

Goal Scoring is the biggest weakness you can have in the NHL. Until the Flames get the best goalie in the league, the best defender in the league and a top 3 2-way centre, they are going to have to score their way to success.

In my opinion, being 17th in both goals for and against is not very 'average'. 16 teams make the playoffs, more than half the league, so finishing outside of that figure is in my opinion decidedly below average. But if we take it by thirds, then yeah, the Flames were an average team. This year? Below average. 22nd in the league in goals for, 19th in goals against. The Flames are 24 goals short of the top 10 in the league, which is basically exactly where I had them pegged at the start of the season. 10 more goals from the 9 players who have played in the bottom 6 this year and 5 more goals from Backlund probably puts the team firmly in the playoffs. That's where the team depth has killed Calgary this year.

We're not debating about whether or not they should be a playoff team, we're debating why they aren't. You're arguing that the roster isn't good enough. I'm arguing the roster is good enough, but the coaching falls short.

And I'm saying the Flames are bad because the organizational philosophy is terrible and the Flames will never find success if they keep doing the same things. How can it be coaching if the previous 2 coaches have had basically the same amount of success or even less?

The team couldn't score enough last year, got swept in the playoffs and can't score enough again this year and will miss the playoffs. What is the 'evidence' that Gulutzan is the reason the Flames are going to miss the playoffs this year, and not, say, getting ~10 goals out of ~100+ games from 8 or 9 guys? Lazar has never been a scorer, is it Gulutzan's fault he has 2 goals this year in 57 games, or does that suggest he's probably not playing with good offensive players while being a weak offensive player himself?

The team is bad, man. The team is predictably bad. The team is bad for a predictable reason. The team has been bad for a long time. In 2012-2013, GG was coaching the Dallas Stars and had them produce the exact amount of goals as the Hartley coached Flames did that year. The stars have basically the same year to year record as the Flames. Last year, no playoffs, the year before, round 2, the year before, no playoffs, the year before round 1.

Maybe it's the organization that is the problem? Is it possible for us to agree that GG isn't the worlds greatest coach but that a team with Hathway and Brouwer getting third line minutes that maybe it's also not the worlds greatest team?