[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Two Fivenagame

Agreed, however, the assessment was based on last season. And until this season gets going, it'll be hard to proclaim Tre's roster changes have vaulted the Calgary Flames into a playoff position.

Prove the article wrong.

It's impossible to prove any predictions wrong until they have occurred, but I can prove that her attempt to satirize the Flames is uninformed, imbalanced, and thus not clever, or amusing. It's lazy. Here is the sum total of everything she has said pertaining to the quality of the team:

· The Flames are mediocre and will finish fifth in the Pacific Division
· Johnny Gaudreau is good, Sean Monahan is a quality centre if he can somehow manage to stay healthy. (Monahan failed to play in at least 81 games last season for the first time since he was a rookie).
· Tkachuk is an entertaining super-pest.

No mention of a coaching change. No mention of the significant roster turnover. Compare this with the vast majority of the other team previews:

Originally Posted by Lauren Thiesen

on the Toronto Maple Leafs: "Despite losing top goalscorer James van Riemsdyk in free agency, the signing of Tavares was the single highest-impact move that any NHL team could have made this offseason.

on the Vegas Golden Knights: "The Golden Knights traded a prospect in Nick Suzuki and a failed deadline acquisition in Tomas Tatar to Montreal in exchange for Max Pacioretty, who put up four straight 30-goal seasons until a down 2017–18. They also signed Paul Stastny, whose presence is a little bit more intangible than points-based at this moment in his career but should still partially cover for the departures of James Neal and David Perron."

on the SJ Sharks: "The Sharks were merely 'pretty good' as they exited the 2017–18 season nursing their wounds from their second-round loss to the Golden Knights. But since they made the blockbustingest trade of the summer by jailbreaking Erik Karlsson out of Ottawa in the final year of his deal, they’ve upgraded from 'solid West Coast team you’re obligated to half-heartedly notice' to 'hey, you might actually want to stay up to watch these guys.'"

on the LA Kings: "At 35, the all-time great Atlanta Thrasher is coming back to America, where he’ll play with the Kings for $6.25 million per year over the next three seasons, and inject some new(?) blood into this roster. Everything else in Los Angeles will be pretty much the same, so Kovalchuk is the difference-maker.'"

on the Columbus Blue Jackets: "They picked up a couple of depth guys—most notably Boston’s Riley Nash—to replace outgoing depth guys like Matt Calvert. And polarizing defenseman Jack Johnson finally left and went to Pittsburgh, which might be addition by subtraction."

on the Philadelphia Flyers: "If Giroux does suffer any type of drop-off, it mostly goes to #### for the Flyers, even if James van Riemsdyk has returned from Toronto to take some of the production load off their captain."

on the Edmonton Oilers: "If goaltender Cam Talbot refuses to recover from his 2017–18 campaign in which he inexplicably decided to play every game with his head upside down in a dumpster—or unless the newly arrived KHL netminder Mikko Koskinen does all right—nothing will change in Edmonton."

on the Florida Panthers: "Mike Hoffman ... came over from Ottawa and promises to score some goals as long as his wife stays off Instagram."

on the St Louis Blues: "Of their new free agent signings, the most exciting is left winger David Perron, who returns to the team after getting plucked up in the expansion draft by Vegas and proceeding to produce a career-best year. They also paid the massive expense of three players and two draft picks just to get sad Sabre Ryan O’Reilly, who could possibly be the epitome of a good stats/bad team guy but regardless will likely get to be the number-one center. With solid enough play from Allen, the Blues will be back to winning exactly two playoff games in no time."

on the Vancouver Canucks: "The team’s new face, Elias Pettersson is a 19-year-old forward who’s coming over after winning MVP last season in the Swedish league. Yes at age 19. So he’ll probably be at least halfway decent in North America, where he’s already doing pretty things."

[B]on the Buffalo Sabres[/I]: "Rasmus Dahlin, baby!!! The reward for Buffalo’s most recent tanking effort is just this absolutely incredible Swedish teen two-way defenseman who was completely dominant in his homeland’s league despite the fact that most kids his age should just be wasting their time getting high and climbing things."

on the Buffalo Sabres: "Rasmus Dahlin, baby!!! The reward for Buffalo’s most recent tanking effort is just this absolutely incredible Swedish teen two-way defenseman who was completely dominant in his homeland’s league despite the fact that most kids his age should just be wasting their time getting high and climbing things."

Whether intended to be funny or not, I consider it a GLARING omission to miss the most important questions facing the Flames heading into the season, which centre quite squarely on the significant changes they made over the summer. She somehow has managed to put her finger more-or-less on the pulse of most NHL teams, but clearly has no idea what is going on in Calgary.

There are plenty of things about which to be critical of the Flames. There is plenty going on with the roster as they head into the new season around which to satirize. Lauren Theisen has ignored all of them and produced a dumb and unfunny preview of the team.