Personally I’m so happy they didn’t trade for Anderson. That was an overpay on both contract and trade return.
The biggest mistake was the Neal contract, and that’s even before you consider his on ice return. Flames needed to understand that the cap space they had there was an asset.
They could have kept that space going into the season to leverage in trades or other moves. One of the big reasons it’s been hard for Treliving to make a trade is because we are right at the cap, tough to make a move with no flexibility on money.
Had Neal not signed here I think Stone could have ended up here. Flames would have had the space to trade for him without Ottawa needing to take cap back, and Flames likely could have fit him in that offseason then if they wanted to re-sign him.
Obviously Neal didn’t work out in retrospect but I also didn’t using all our cap space on him at the time when it looked like two more impactful players (Stone/Hall) could potentially be available in the upcoming offseasons.
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