Quote:
Originally Posted by djsFlames
There's no comparison to the capitals. They were atop the regular standings perennially and just needed time to break through on the playoff side of it. Flames continually struggle or plateau down the stretch into playoffs and aside from one season where everything went right, are firmly a bubble club. They haven't yet figured out how to place high in the regular season as a baseline and have been a group for several years. That tells you its a case of the team just not having a high ceiling due to merely good but no elite skill.
As a manager you have to stay impartial & intellectually honest enough to make the best decisions for your team. Definitely got the impression Brad was too invested in the core and believed they could accomplish things they didn't have the tools to. If he managed to add a couple Toffoli-level wingers (partly by not making that mistake on Neal) then they maybe could've done it by committee. But with just Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk-Monahan doing the heavy lifting, there is not enough skill and consistency there to get it done.
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To boot we stuck with the players we picked up even after they were doing hardly anything on the ice for the whole season. No wonder our core guys had a low GAF meter. The guys that came in didn't push the team.