When the coach and the team (or individual players) are having a disconnect, it falls on the captain to mitigate the issues. Captains keep players in-line. They help to ensure that all the players are following the coach's direction. When there are issues, the captain often has the responsibility of sitting down with the players. There is a lot of leading that a captain actually does.
Flames (and other teams) can definitely get the job done by committee. I think it is preferential to have a good captain, but when there isn't one, the committee approach certainly can be enough. Flames and Rangers both didn't have captains, and neither one of them seemed to skip a beat. However, why have captains at all then? Tradition? Obviously there is something more to it than just having some irrelevant figurehead for the media to pounce on after a bad game.
Monahan, Gaudreau and perhaps especially Tkachuk were all huge parts of that leadership group, and now they are all gone. Gudbranson apparently became an important piece of that room as well. Maybe the Flames didn't name a captain last season because they wanted to see where Monahan was health-wise, or if Tkachuk would sign long-term.
I think they name a captain this season. I think they would be fine without one, but I do think they name one this season.
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