When you look at how Las Vegas played things, it's a great example of how you can improve your club in the immediate term by focusing on the long term.
Vegas has done this the last two years while the flames have done the opposite.
Last season rather than give James Neal a massive contract they let Calgary outbid them and then just left the cap space open. At the deadline, Calgary had to move out significant cap to do a deal whereas Vegas could add Mark stone without skipping a beat. They positioned themselves for the future by a avoiding the temptations of the now and walked away with Mark Stone.
Last summer, facing a cap crunch, Vegas moved out Miller and Gusev, a player they couldn't sign. They moved both players purely for draft picks, draft picks being the transitional currency of the league. This allowed them to keep the players they wanted and allowed them to accumulate the Cap necessary to make deadline acquisitions for need. The currency they acquired in July was what they've spent in February and they have addressed the vacancy they created in moving Miller by adding Martinez, which is an upgrade at the position.
The Flames by contrast made no such deals, and were forced to bridge Tkachuk. That is a bad move dictated by a lack of cap space. So by making a short term decision they lost out on two long term assets: signing tkachuk to term as well as transitional currency of picks. Obviously keeping frolik for half a year was a meaningless endeavour, but the time value of not having that space was lost.
Now, the flames don't have the transitional currency available to address their weaknesses, arguably their best player is set up to leave to free agency at his first opportunity, and the value of a trade for their quickly depreciating assets appears to be deteriorating.
These are foreseen consequences between good management and bad.
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