Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinny01
Deciding the fate of a team based off a bad year during a pandemic where players are isolated and not playing in front of crowds doesn’t seem like a great strategy to me.
Flames would be selling low on almost everyone. It would be ridiculous to try and do that. If Sutter gets pieces that fit his style and Markstrom bounces back the Flames are fighting for 8th place and not top pick which would make the rebuild crowd ever so happy.
The biggest mistake of last offseason was tripling down on Gaudreau-Monahan. One of both of those players needed to be traded in the offseason and their value is even less than it would have been last offseason. It makes no sense to sell low on Tkachuk and I do not see a scenario he stays here through a rebuild. I don’t see Sutter staying through a rebuild. I don’t see the organization paying 3-4 coaches and multiple GM’s so is anyone happy with Treliving or one of his assistants rebuilding this team?
I think most fans realize big changes are coming but due to a new building, owners wanting money, and understanding that what happened this season has many factors not typically at play due to the pandemic. I don’t think they sell the fans on a rebuild I think they shake it up and see how Darryl does with a new mix.
As a season ticket holder I would certainly accept the organization shifting to a rebuild however I absolutely would cancel my tickets. I would still attend 3-7 games a season and watch every game on TV but I wouldn’t spend the $8k on tickets and all the concessions and parking. Hopefully the Flames still have a waiting list of fans willing to spend that money on a team trying to tank in the worst building in the league.
I will say this though. If we hear about the rink being delayed 1-2 years and we have to wait 5+ years for a new rink I could see the Flames entertaining the tear down because it gives them time to put a competitive team together but then again will that satisfy the fans that do not want to take shortcuts and really be patient and take 5-7 years to build a contender?
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That's not what anyone is doing though. It's 7 years of in/out/in/out from a playoff perspective while only winning one series. Nothing should be done because of one season, but when you look at the 7 years? That's where things need to be changed in a significant way. The entire approach to building a team is incorrect, and we have a 7 year data set to draw that conclusion. Change the friggin' approach. I hope the big changes we’re all hoping for aren’t just “player X out and player Y in”, because that’s not a big enough change to take this team from a bottom-5 to a top-5 team in this league.
I am just baffled by the thought process that what we've done for the past 7 years is worse than a rebuild.
"Stretch out my suffering for 7 years. I don't want it focused into 1-2 seasons of true tanking"
The tanking process is the ugly part, but once you complete that then we're effectively right back to where we've been every single year for the last 30 years - trying to do our absolute best to be a good team. Focus the tank, and then hope that after 1-2 seasons of it, your management team is good enough to start improving the team from within and from external sources.
Rebuilding does not equate 7 years of tanking. It's a 1-2 year process of tanking to hopefully acquire the required pieces in spots 1-3 in the draft, followed by trying to build a winning team right away. The only difference to rebuilding vs. what we're doing right now is that 1-2 year window.
Why are we satisfied with spending to the cap with an under skilled, inadequate core that is completely missing the foundational pieces that 90% of Stanley Cup champions are built upon?
The "biggest mistake" of any of these last 7 (30) years is trying to build a winning team without the foundational pieces required. If we're trying to be a good team for when the new arena comes online, the only real path to that is through the rebuild - because it's the only way we're getting top-end (elite) centres/defensemen between now and then. Why are we okay with all these high end players being in other cities and winning championship? Where are our elite players? The blueprint to get them is visible to everyone.