Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric Vail
Why is this an all-in year for Calgary? Are they really on the cusp of greatness?
I think most fans would be happy with they winning a playoff round, winning two rounds would be awesome. Trading away their future for that just seems silly.
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The team has to take a big step forward, otherwise there is almost no point in keeping Gaudreau.
As has been mentioned, are Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Mangi, and Kylington going to improve relative to their AAV increases? Are Backlund/Lucic/Tanev/Markstrom likely to maintain/improve their production relative to AAV?
Continuing this path without improvement means betting on Dubé/Hanifin/Andersson/Valimaki/Lindholm to continue developing/improving outweighing the above's collectively decrease (at least relative to AAVs) and seeing some of Zary/Pelletier/Mackey/etc emerge.
Beyond that, the path out of the resurgence division is likely to get more difficult with LAK and ANA...VGK a bit more of a wildcard depending on Eichel.