Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
The bottom of most NHL rosters is filled with “rubbish.” Regulars on teams around the Flames in the conference standings:
NSH: Thomas Novak, Michael McCarron, Matt Benning.
ANA: Derek Grant, Simon Beniot, Buddy Robinson.
STL: James Neal, Jake Walman, Robert Bortuzzo.
The Flames’ problem isn’t the bottom of the roster. Or the top line. It’s that mid-roster players have either declined (Monahan, Backlund) or failed to progress (Hanifin, Andersson, Dube). Not having a single defenceman in the top 50 in the position doesn’t help.
People expecting Treliving to fix this roster with a mid-season trade are in for disappointment. Those kinds of trades went out with the Discman. In today’s NHL, the roster you ice on opening night is the one you finish the season with.
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It's why I keep going back to his failings to create a legitimate 2nd line. It's not the bottom 6 that has hurt this team. It's the lack of a 2nd line. There was maybe a two year stretch when Backlund/Tkachuk/Frolik was just good enough but that was a while ago and to make matters worse, a soon to be 33 year old Backlund is
still the 2nd line center when he wasn't an ideal one in his prime. Instead of addressing top 6 depth he was dicking around giving up 1st and multiple 2nd round picks for Hamonic when defensive depth wasn't a major issue. To me that's when everything unravelled.