Quote:
Originally Posted by activeStick
Addressing the questions from the other posters... I believe that building teams takes longer than 7 years, especially a team in the state the Flames were in when he took over in 2014. Treliving has made mistakes, but when I look at all of his moves in totality, I see more in the 'Good Move' column than the bad. For me, obviously, James Neal sucks and didn't work out at all, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who predicted what happened would happen when he was first signed that day. I bring this transaction up because I like that Treliving works fairly aggressively to address holes he perceives. And related to this, he had no issue moving Neal out when it was clear he sucks, which is a quality that many people don't have, as it amounts to admitting a mistake. This is a good and in my opinion rare quality to find in executives in all lines of work. It takes time (longer than 7 years) for drafting and culture change to make an impact, in my opinion.
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What building teams takes, is patience and an emphasis on drafting.
Treliving has been impatient and traded countless draft picks on replacement level players who wouldn't be here even 3 years later (Hamonic, Lazar, Elliott, Smith, Fantenberg, Forbort, Gustavsson). He's wasted a ton of cap space on UFA veterans. He's taken his highest-ever draft pick and constructed roster-after-roster in which that player would be buried, and never able to log a twenty minute ice time game, culminating in losing a 4th overall pick for two seconds, only to see him break out the minute he gets an opportunity.
That is simply not how you build a contending team. It's how you build a treadmill team. Which is exactly what Malony and Treliving have build whether it's in Arizona or Calgary.