Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
My god. Seriously?
Nashville has drafted some great defensemen, but take a look at their forward group: Johanson? Acquired in a trade. Turris? Acquired in a trade. Bonino? Signed as a UFA. They hit a home run with Arvidsson—who is NOT better than every Flames forward—but even their leading scorer and only truly elite sniper, Filip Forsberg, was acquired in a trade.
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Johansen traded for a Top Prospect.
Turris traded for a Top Prospect.
Flames hit a home run with Gaudreau in the same round Nashville grabbed Arvidsson. Does Gaudreau not count?
The point, of course, is that all of those teams save the Jets have managed to draft better than the Flames have in the last 4 season when they saw significant post season success. The Flames over that same time frame weren't making it to the conference final or the cup final, they won what, 6 playoff games?
If anything, the standard for the Flames should be even HIGHER than it is for teams that also happened to be going for it in preceding years, as there is no real excuse to be trading those picks away to be a non-playoff team when you can use them to draft players like the Jets have.
Of course, it's not just the now that matters, but the preceding history. The Iginla Flames flamed out in large part because Dustin Boyd and Mikael Backlund were the team's best prospects during those years. I have to laugh at fans on this board more eager to challenge me than their preconceptions about drafting when given the overwhelming negative history of being a Flames Fan.
As fans, we should have all the evidence we need at this point. The team was at it's best when it was drafting frequently in the 80s and at it's worst when it was draft infrequently through the last years of sutter and feaster.
The best teams in the league happen to draft the best.
Let's go back 10 years instead of 5 to see just how frickin' terrible it is:
Goals Drafted 2008-2017 drafts:
Nashville: 688
Boston: 577
Tampa: 1021
Jets: 420 (the jets of course came into the league with their first draft in 2011)
Flames: 547
Over that time frame the Bruins won the cup and lost in the finals, Tampa lost in the conference final twice and the cup final once, Nashville lost in the finals once and made the second round 3 times.
The Flames made the second round once, missed the playoffs 6 times.