Quote:
Originally Posted by sa226
A lot of things have to go right to win a Cup. You don't just draw up a blueprint and set them loose.
The Flames have had all the necessary ingredients to be a perennial contender in a 3 to 5 year window. It's easy to point to the mistakes of Brouwer, Neal and Hamonic. But most GMs have blunders like that.
The Flames have drafted top 10, 3 times. They have acquired 2 more players that were top 10 picks, they had an undrafted player win the Norris and have struck gold with a couple lower draft picks. To me those are some pretty darn good ingredients for a contending team. It just hasn't panned out. They're stale and they're not good enough. It really is time to break up the core. With Sutter in as coach, who knows what happens. It's almost too little too late.
The one thing I absolutely lay at the feet of Treliving is the goaltending, with an honorable mention to coaching. In a results based business, when this group was in a decent position to win a round or 2, the goaltending absolutely let them down. That's on Treliving.
I hesitate a bit with the coaching, because I do think it's difficult to get top coaches to come here for whatever reason. Gulutzan was a mistake, but Peters was his guy. He was the one he wanted all along. Regardless of whether or not you think Treliving should have done more DD on Peters' past, that didn't end the way it was supposed to.
I'm really 50 -50 on Treliving. I think he is smart enough to recognize his mistakes and can adjust and grow. You can't discount the importance of stability. He also has done more that enough to get a big ol pink slip.
Meh.
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Which series did goalies really cost us? IIRC COL and DAL it wasn't an issue until elimination games (and was a bright spot before that). Against ANA our GF were 2, 2, 4, 1. Only 2 of those at EVS. Goaltending could have helped us steal that series, but it was only part of the reason we lost.
Goalies are voodoo. How many teams in the league are really, really confident in their goalies down the stretch?
TBL. ANA (irrelevant). WPG. VGK (though I'm not sure how confident they'd be with just one of them). Maybe COL - Grubauer's numbers are pretty darn good the last few years.
I'd argue that most years there are only 5-7 teams with great goaltending, and another 15-20 where it's okay, but questionable.
This year should be evidence enough that goaltending was never the thing holding this group back.