[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Our idea of what scorched earth is, clearly differs. If you eliminate the old core of Giordano, Brodie, Backlund, Monahan and Gaudreau, you are left with a strong young group of players yet to hit their peak ability. You could get rid of all of these guys, and I can see an argument for going that way, but I think that the Flames are in the position where some of their young guys have surpassed the abilities of the old core. Tkachuk, Lindholm and Andersson. We have also seen strides in the group coming up behind them.

Giordano is likely to play out his contract here. Backlund has control over his own destiny until next year. Brodie has likely priced himself out of Calgary and wants to play in the East. Most people here have come to terms trading JG, and are split on Monahan.

That's possibly 3 out of 5 core pieces gone. So, charred earth?

Stealth answer for ER ------ tenure.

I've detailed in several posts what scorched earth means to me.

It is essentially committing to being a bottom 5-10 team for a 3-4 year period, trading any player playing significant minutes that's over the age of 25, and getting back purely bad contracts with good picks and prospects attached to them.

To do that though it was critical to sign Tkachuk to term instead of a bridge deal, because now you can't really go scorched earth and expect to keep tkachuk at the end of his deal

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

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.