When you look back at the Seattle expansion draft less than a year later I would argue no team benefited more from the results than the Flames for the following reasons:
1- the looming expansion draft forced the Canucks to make a decision on their goaltending sooner than they likely would have wanted. If the Seattle draft wasn’t on the horizon the Canucks could have signed Markstrom and made a decision in a year who they wanted to move forward with. With Markstrom requiring the NMC the Canucks had to make a call so they stuck with Demko and allowed Markstrom to walk to free agency right into the Flames hands. Markstrom is the best goalie on the Flames since Kipper and is a huge reason they are a legit contender today
2- Selecting Gio. While losing the captain and one of the all time franchise greats hurt the fallout of this selection helped the Flames with 3 key areas:
3- Kylington breakout. This is the first and most obvious positive result from Gio moving on. There was an opportunity available to 3 Dmen to grab it (Kylington, Valimaki, Zadorov) and Kylington (who was waived the year before and exposed to Seattle) stepped up huge. Flames have 3 of their top 4 D from the 2015 draft class all around 25 years old now.
4- cap space created. Gio leaving freed up 6.75M in cap and adding that with a few of the minimum on tracks that were allowed to walk the Flames were able to spend the money on Coleman, Zadorov, and Gubbransen who have all been keys to transforming the identity of this team into one that is extremely physical and hard to play against. Coleman adds Cup winning pedigree and leadership filling a need in the top 6. Our 500lb third pair is likely the best bottom pairing in the league and will be huge come playoff time.
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