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Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
It's a possibility seeing his brother did that. However I just don't understand why Treliving wouldn't have worked harder to make that work. The 3 year deal was always going to be worst case scenario for the Flames as you never want to give the player the option to walk in his prime.
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Treliving has been on record saying that he wanted to build as deep of a team as he could for that window (ending in 2022).
I actually don’t even completely disagree with that tactic. Personally, I would go the route of re-signing your franchise players for as long as possible though as soon as you can. But both methods have their pros and cons.
In the end though, it was Treliving’s execution that ultimately failed him, not his strategy. What good is cap space if all you do is sign or trade for mediocre players to long term deals? Brad loves his complimentary players, but his vision and assessment of how they’ll fit on the team is abysmal. It’s very possible that the byproduct of those numerous mistakes and lost assets lead to him losing his 2 franchise players.
Maybe if he had more cap space or assets to create more cap space (i.e. draft picks), perhaps he wouldn’t have felt the need to pinch those pennies and he could then sign Tkachuk (2019) and Gaudreau (2021) to those long term deals when he had a chance.