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Job No. 1 in the hours and days leading up to the trade deadline is separating the emotion of the moment from the decision-making.

“At the end of the day, nobody lives it or dies more than the people on the inside,’’ Treliving told The Athletic on Thursday afternoon. “This is our livelihood. So when it doesn’t go the way you anticipate or planned, obviously you’re miserable. But you can’t just react because it feels good to throw a body off the tarmac. That doesn’t help you. You have to be realistic of where you’re at and you have to act accordingly. We’ve always tried to do that. You get pissed when things aren’t going well, but you have to separate that from action. That’s why you have a staff and that’s why you have checks and balances that you go through. Because especially when things aren’t going the way you wanted them to, it’s an emotional time for everybody.

“It’s the manager’s job as the leader to take a deep breath, step back from the fire, and be able to say, ‘OK, we have to be steady at the rudder here and make sure that we’ve identified what the issues are.’ Not emotional or superficial reasons, but what are the areas where you’re or what are the reasons that you’re in this situation. And you try to address them.’’

“Hey, you look at deals all the time, as far as the deadline it’s the last time you can do anything until the season is done. I think every team looks at ways they can improve themselves regardless of the situation they’re in,” said the Flames GM. “The separating factor is that you’ve got teams that are in good spots that are looking to help themselves now. And then when you look at hockey deals, the reason you don’t see a lot of those now is that if you take a good portion of the teams that are in a good spot right now, they’re not looking to take anything off their team right now.

“And then the other things, with all the moving pieces in an expansion year and how that may affect your protection list, or taking on a contract beyond this year in a flat cap, those are all the things that usually sets it up for those types of deals to happen in the offseason.’’

These final 16 games will still help answer some questions leading up to the offseason. It’s not a wasted time frame.

“No, that’s a good point, you’re constantly evaluating,” said Treliving. “Especially in a Canadian market where there’s a bright light on you, you have to remove all that noise, black that all out, and your evaluation continues the whole time. And you’re right, who knows what will happen the next few days, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of trying to help yourself; especially in an expansion year where I think there’s going to be a lot of moving pieces come the offseason. You can’t make offseason moves within the middle of the season, right? So what you do if you stay present to where you are right now and all you can do is do all the work leading up to the deadline, whether you do something or not if predicated to what’s available to you; then you work with what’s next. But you can’t get to second base before you get to first base.’’

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