Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
Anyone with less term than Neal is worth considering IMO. He was scratched in favor of an AHL level player in most important game of year.
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it depends what the goal is.
If you want to win in the next 2 years, you need to do everything you can to maximize your cap space which means not taking on another bad contract, whether it's 1 year left or 4. You package picks or prospects like Dube with the bad money you want to send out, and then you send out more picks and maybe a top prospect like Valimaki to get that player that pushes you over the top like a legit top tier centre.
If you're looking to tread water, there are all sorts of bad contracts out there you could trade for, but that doesn't really improve the situation at all for the Flames in a winning capacity. Even if Neal was a 20 goal guy, the Flames are still seriously lacking in their centre group. 77 and 47 points from your top 2 centres isn't going to cut it, especially when one of them doesn't provide a ton other than scoring.
Decide if you want to win now or win later and make the appropriate moves.
In my mind the situation for the Flames now is to try to win with Tkachuk and the young defensive group, which means selling in the short term. Think trading Backlund, Gio, Gaudreau, Monahan, Brodie, Hamonic for primarily picks and high level prospects (vs the hanowski's of the world).
There's a way to win and there's a way to not and I think right now following this loss you have to consider where the Flames are at in terms of that winning formula.
The rebuild is over and this is more or less the team now in terms of their high end, core group. Is this roster good enough or should you try again for a window 3 years from now with a 24 year old Tkachuk and a defensive group just entering their prime years?
You can do one or the other, but there is a straight forward and established roadmap to building a contending roster.
My guess is the Flames will go in the win now direction and I honestly don't think that has much chance at success. Maybe with a player like Stone or O'Reilly you'd have a chance, but those guys don't become available often. If you have to move a bunch of assets to drop your dead money to fit one of those guys in, do you then still have the assets to actually grab them? I don't think so with where the organization is right now. They need those assets like Valimaki and Andersson to actually compete.
Calgary's continual sustained problem has been robbing Peter to pay Paul. This will always be the problem until they address that asset gap with some short term pain for long term gain.
I don't think the Flames ownership has it in them to do that though, especially not with the Arena hanging in the balance.