Quote:
Originally Posted by jjgallow
No offense but you just fired like 12 questions at me and if I were to respond fully to each one this thread would be another 3 pages. Also, almost all of your questions I've already answered via other people asking effectively the same thing.
Trades either build your future, sacrifice your future, or are neutral in that regard.
Most of the trades the Flames make, sacrifice their future, which is ultimately the same reason that they will never be cup favorites. They can't get ahead of themselves. Decisions made 5 years ago put us behind Colorado. Decisions being made now hurt us 5 years out.
I don't think of it in terms of odds. I think of it in terms of:
Best player: Gaudreau. Inneffective in playoffs, especially against contending teams
Best Dman: Tanev. Nobody's winning a cup with that.
Best Goalie: Markstrom. More debatable than the first two, but I've never seen playoff promise here.
That's all I need to know really. Sure you could go into far greater detail but if you know your scoring is going to drop right off and you have no way of defending against the NHL's top scorers, well, you're not a cup favourite. We got there by literally trading away all our best D, ignoring top D in the draft as well, for short term gratifications. The only player we really have committed to (Gaudreau) is a regular season wonder.
Anyway I've answered that a lot, we all know it's true.
97% of trades? most trades have a winner and a loser. In most cases the team sacrificing its future is the loser. They are simply gambling, and we know the long term outcome of that. It's like saying 99% of lotto buyers won't come out ahead. What...99%? that's ridiculous. Surely if it were that bad people wouldn't do it..
Yes, giving away draft picks is pretty black and white, you're right about that.
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Your argument is predicated on this, but you haven't really backed this up in a meaningful way. Do that and maybe people are more likely to listen.
To my mind, teams have different needs at different points in their process. A team cannot just build from assets within because they will not all hit their prime at the same time. Sometimes you need to trade some future assets for an asset now that will take you to the next level. Yes, there is a tradeoff knowing full well you will go in cycles of being good and being not so good. This is how sports works. Being at the very very top or very very bottom has a lot to do with luck and events that are usually out of your control (think Monahan's injury history as an example of something that changes your team's projection).
Trading future assets for help now isn't a bad choice if you're close. You never know how the luck will go or how series matchups will happen. If you've established a good playoff core you can always go for it. You disagree that the Flames had a good core, but I think you're wrong. Was it the best? No, but it had potential, especially with the style of game they played, to go very far.
But I'm probably wasting my time because no matter what I say you're going to say the Flames current core sucks and Toffoli is a dinosaur. You're going to say that trading anything unless you're absolutely sure of massive success is a mistake. All of those positions are myopic and probably very wrong, but hey, you're allowed to your very wrong opinion.