This was the best regular season Flames team I have ever watched and gave me a ton of hope that the rebuild was going to yield a long run as a top team. Treliving had a transformational summer with his free agent signings and blockbuster deal with the Hurricanes.
While that team did lose to the second wildcard they also faced an emerging elite team in the Avs who have since proven they were on the path to being a top team in the league with a player on the same tier as the best in the league and they also debuted a superstar Dman in the first round who got a $9M AAV after his ELC in Makar.
The Flames have been peeling back members of that core over the last few years 3 out of 4 of their veteran D are gone but they still have 5 of their top 6 forwards and that is the biggest problem in my opinion. Whether it was Mark Stone, Jason Zucker, Nazem Kadri, Taylor Hall, Pierre-Luc Dubois, or now actually Blake Coleman they have been searching for a legit top 6 scorer. Coleman is an upgrade on Frolik but is he a huge upgrade on the peak Frolik we saw as a Flame?
This team still needs the shakeup move upfront
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