All this talk by Francis that the team should be in the playoffs but outside of four players the players lack investment in the team kind of absolves the coaching staff. If you really don't believe in the coaching staff how invested can you be? You think fans were the only people questioning powerplay deployment, player usage, strategy, etc? You don't think the players were getting the feeling they weren't being put in position to do their best? The way the team collectively failed down the stretch doesn't point to a handful of players lacking investment. It shows a team that simply didn't have confidence that what they were doing was going to take them to the playoffs.
Has Troy Brouwer since day one ever looked like a player invested in anything since he signed that deal and put on the Flames jersey? Not to me and the GM gets all the credit for his addition. It's not as easy as assuming a player from another team is going to fit into your locker room and become any more invested than players you want to move out for lacking. He needs to be very careful here as I recall how much damage it caused the organization shipping out Marc Savard for peanuts because of a bad coach and I'm weary of history repeating and this team moving out their most talented players because of bad coaching. I just don't understand how 7 months back Treliving thought he had a playoff and maybe cup contender and all of a sudden he's questioning that because of a bad season. Surely he's been around long enough to know what Hamilton, Monahan, Gaudreau were all about by this stage. I really hope there's no knee jerk reactions as we have been questioning the heart of the Flames since 2007 and the only common denominator to me over that time is substandard coaching because the players have changed but the results have not. Lets see what a Flames team can do with actual above average coaching for once before we start blaming another generation of players.
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