Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSquatch
Feaster came in after what most of us would call a debacle of Sutter-ian GMing, trading Jokkinen for Kotalik and then bringing Jokkinen back again, just blowing away picks like they were worthless.
And when Feaster took the reins I thought "Oh, thank God, some sanity." And in his first presser, he said the mandate from ownership was to make the playoffs. No rebuild.
Same thing Sutter said. And acted on.
Make the playoffs. Ken King was transparent about this. That's what the ownership group wants.
So the result is this teetering team, never bad enough to draft high, never good enough to beat the best (what's the Flames record in the regular season against playoff teams? It's never great. Flames poach points off of bad teams and scrape in.).
It is what it is now. A cap team with minimal genuine assets on the farm, and a pretty good team on the ice (at best), but not a world beater.
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The Flames really just needed to bottom out once in their rebuilding years and pick up that big #1 center they've been searching for forever, this team would be so much further ahead. The 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 drafts all had elite #1 centers right at the very top. Instead, the Flames end up picking #6, #4, #15, #6 in those years. It's hard to win when you're not picking top tier players and and you have to watch other teams pick up top tier players. That's a big swing.