Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Excuses are either made up and used to protect, or actual limitations.
A cap world hurts every team.
Monahan's injury hurts Calgary.
Gaudreau, Monahan and Tkachuk's production slide hurts Calgary.
Lots of deals out there for sure, and some at prices that seemed silly. Calgary didn't go that far, and you can certainly disagree with that, but it doesn't make easily quantifiable reasons for why moving core pieces were difficult any less obvious.
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I enjoy your takes and consistently stop when I set you've posted, for what it is worth.
I go back to your past points on the difficulty of predicting future player progression. The team thought they had a collection of top-tier forwards and defense. I didn't disagree with the team's assessment after 2015/2016. The choice was whether to pull out of the rebuild and try to compete hoping that they have enough high tier forwards and a strong defence core. Turns out they were wrong on both options (odd that their forwards are not as top tier but I am worried about their defence construction more each day).
The Flames are at the end of the cycle and probably should cut bait with this crop of players (in my opinion), but we are seeing other teams making similar decisions: LA as an example. I'm sure there are others. People may have their opinions on LA doing so - was this the right time to pull the plug, should they maximize the time with Doughty and Kopitar, are their young prospects going to turn into front line players? If their crop of prospects turn out to be good but not great players, then this decision may be as warmly received as the Flames' decision in a few years. Byfield, for example, may be a top-five player in the NHL in the future or he could be a good player but not franchise altering (e.g. Jay Bouwmeester).
Probably confusing team management decisions are figuring out what is the outlier - the team that drafts high and loses or the team that is competitive but finds good players. People keep pointing to Tampa but many of their top players today are drafted outside of the first round whereas you have the Edmonton, Buffalo, Arizona, that seem to be constantly drafting high with very little to show for it.
At least in the last couple of years, I would say that the Flames have changed perspective from we need to support this core and will trade draft picks to do so (almost indiscriminately) to more caution about what kind of players they want to bring in and guarding their higher end draft picks. They seem to be straddling the middle road without actually making a call on this core.
Sorry for the rambling thoughts in any event.