Treliving started his job in 2014. Now, Burke was still guiding him and so on for a few seasons, but 2014 is the year that Treliving was brought in to be the GM of the Calgary Flames.
IMO, the GM is the guy you look at as being responsible for all areas of hockey - amateur and professional scouts, contracts, coaching hires, roster movement, etc. He is ultimately responsible for what happens in each area, as he either directly hires and manages people in those areas, or he hires VPs who then become directly responsible. The buck still stops with Treliving, however.
Do I think that the Calgary Flames of 2019/20 are a better team than the Calgary Flames of 2014/15? Unquestionably so. Of course they are. I mean, they better be! Treliving got hired as the GM of a team that was in the early stages of a rebuild.
Of course you have the previous GMs fingerprints on this team - Sutter's, Feaster's and now Treliving. They all were responsible for the existing core in some way. However, every current member of the team has a contract that was signed by Treliving, and by now, he has had every opportunity to make moves with respect to the core. This is Treliving's team. You can thank the previous management for initially bringing those players into the fold, but it is Treliving's job to identify them as players he should keep, or players that don't make sense long-term. I actually think he has done a fairly good job here as well.
Whatever I think about the individual moves, or what areas he has been extremely good in and what areas he has been poor in is relatively irrelevant. This is the question that I ask myself now:
Did Treliving do a good enough job building a contender? Is it fair to expect a rebuilding team to contend after 6 years of rebuilding?
That's where I start to think that Treliving perhaps is deserving of being let-go. This team is not a contender. They don't appear to be anything more than just a bubble team. Now, you can argue that he has been great at RFA or general player re-signings (Brodie, Gio, Monahan, Gaudreau, Lindholm, etc.) will prove you right, but I think he took an enormous and unnecessary risk with the Tkachuk re-signing.
He may be good at drafting, and poor at UFA signings. He may be good at managing and dealing with the media, but poor at hiring coaches. He has done really great things, but he has also had his failings.
I just look at this team now after 6 years of him running it - is it the team that I hoped for? Well, I am actually fine with a new rebuild, so the answer is definitely a no. This team is not poised for a cup run. I don't care if it is the players that wilted, or poor coaching, or not being able to find a goalie that can steal an occasional game, or just bad luck running into to the top teams in the NHL - I don't see this team right now as being able to beat any strong team in the NHL right now. I think it performs like a middle of the pack team, and I think it is a middle of the pack team.
Whether it is a roster problem, whether it is a coaching issue, whether it is a culture problem - I don't know what it is and I don't know how to fix it - but that's why the Flames pay Brad Treliving instead of me. It is his responsibility to ensure that this team is as competitive as possible. After six seasons, I still don't see that.
Now, if you want to argue that Burke's fingerprints are all over this still and that Treliving hasn't had enough time, that's a different argument. I just see that he was hired in April 2014, it is now August 2020, and I don't see a team that is capable of winning the cup - nor do I even see a team that I am confident in to make the playoffs next season. Maybe if it wasn't a cap team I can understand - some teams have owners unwilling or unable to spend to the cap, putting their teams on slightly uneven ground. This is a cap team and has been for a while. There really is no excuse that satisfies me at this point as to why the Flames are not at the very least a top team that you can expect to meet the low bar of consistently making the playoffs.
That's where I am at, and that's why I think Treliving probably should be let go.
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