Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
My problem with that is that the team is worse than they were last year, and worse than they have been in recent years. It's not like the Flames have been some steady contender for years - they've been in and out of the playoffs, and have had extremely limited playoff success when they do make it. The Islanders "got better" when Tavares left for a short period of time. Now? Look at where they are. They won nothing at the end of the day because they were a poorly structured team that was incredibly well coached.
Going out and spending money on Forsberg while losing Gaudreau just even more firmly entrenches this team in mediocrity. That's even without considering that Forsberg signing here would be the single biggest free agent signing in organizational history. We've NEVER signed a UFA of that quality. They just don't choose Calgary. Why would Forsberg choose Calgary even from a roster perspective without Johnny here. A team losing their best player doesn't exactly scream like "oh hey, that's a winning organization!".
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The bolded is the most tired argument ever. Aside from the fact that signing UFAs has never been the key to contending (see PHI, NYR), there simply haven't been enough top tier free agents changing teams for any team to cry poor about it.
Last decade (since 8 year limit):
Pietrangelo
Panarin
Bobrovsky
Tavares
Hamilton
Krug
Duchene
Hayes
maybe a few more in this 2nd tier
Frist 7 years of cap era:
Parise
Suter
B Richards
Bryzgalov
Redden
Chara
Hossa
B Campbell
Bouwmeester
Rafalski
Briere
Timonen
Gomez
Drury
Smyth
Niedermayer
Obviously this list is all over the place in terms of actual talent and I'm probably missing a few later career/shorter term deals similar to Niedermayer (Gionta, Kariya, etc.)
Bouwmeester is unquestionably among the top 30 UFAs in the cap era; I've listed 24 guys above - 9 of which were signed by PHI/NYR. CHI and Min have also double-dipped, so CGY is actually among the ~12 teams that have actually landed a big fish.