[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

They don’t need to spend $82M to avoid negative cash flow. They could emphasize building through the draft and developing their own talent.

Every team can do that. Don't act like the Flames would be the only ones who ever thought of it.

They don’t. They spend to the cap every year, whether or not it makes sense.

In this league, either you spend to the cap or you confess you're not even trying to make the playoffs. Budget teams routinely end up in the lottery, year after year. It's a natural consequence of playing with a hard cap.

Since all teams can build through the draft, and nearly all teams can spend to the cap, that is simply the minimum price of admission if you want to be competitive. If, like most of the Canadian owners, you want to avoid having an empty arena because you daren't risk losing that kind of money, it always makes sense to spend as close to the cap as you can manage.

They give out stupid contracts July 1 every year because they like the headlines, and because they’ve been historically quite poor at developing talent.

I haven't seen any evidence that the Flames' owners like the headlines at all. And it is certainly not the case that they give out ‘stupid contracts’ every year.

You could pay $80M for what the Flames get, or you could pay $60M for a few years, and then get 90 home games of playoff revenue over a 15 year period with Sid.

There's only one Crosby, and the team that got him didn't get him by tanking; they got him by a lottery in which all 30 teams participated – and they got him before a single game had been played under the cap system. Spending to the salary floor does not cause the league to award you the best player in the game.

Nobody owns a sports team if they’re not fiercely competitive.

The original owners of the Flames bought the team not because they were competitive, but because they wanted their community to have a big-league hockey team. Other owners, both in hockey and in other sports, have done the same. And of course there have been owners like Bill Wirtz and Harold Ballard, who were only in it for the money and didn't give a damn whether the team won or lost.

Murray’s problem is he’s competitive to a fault. He goes for it when he should punt, but he gets conservative in the red zone.

This requires support from other sources, which you do not provide. I don't pretend to know anything about Murray Edwards' personal character from the way that his employees run a relatively small business of which he is not even the majority owner. I don't think you can draw any conclusions from that.

He wants Mark Stone and Jack Eichel, but he gets cold feet at the thought of overpaying, even though overpaying is exactly what it takes to keep a star in the market.

Every GM wants star players, and no GM wants to overpay for them. You make this sound like it's a bad thing, which it isn't; and then you blame it on a meddling owner, which you have no grounds for.

It’s why McDavid makes $12.5M, because when someone offers you $100M to play hockey, it doesn’t matter if it’s in Edmonton - you say “yes”.

This is such a baffling non sequitur that I have no idea what to say to it. It isn't related to any point in this whole discussion.