[Sylvanfan]

To me the Sharks are a cautionary tale that the Flames need to look at. The Sharks had a pretty good run of being an elite team. The playoff success never quite matched the regular season, but they were a second round team pretty consistently.

But the core got old and they had too many pricey long term contracts which has hamstrung the team. Now it's 4 straight years out of the playoffs and 3 more of cleanup to flush out enough of these to get the financial flexibility to get a new one in place. So it could be a 8-9 year project when it's done.

The Flames very much are trending to be like a lower tier version of the Sharks but with far less on ice results.