Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason14h
No top 50 players arguably
Do the Flame have a top 20 D in the league ? A Top 30 forward ?
You win with elite talent in this league not depth .
We lost our 2 closest to elite players (MT is looking to be and JG more of a “should be your 3rd best player on a cup team) and replaced them with “should have been really good players “.
Who then weren’t really good
People always talk about 04 but the Flames had elite players without argument in Kipper and Iggy .
This team has nothing resembling elite talent , and no path to acquiring in the near term . That’s a recipe for disaster going forward
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Top-20 D, no.
Top-30 F, maybe. Huberdeau was more productive than Gaudreau over the previous four seasons - I’m more willing to bet this disastrous trade/roster/coaching staff are the reason he looked lost all year vs him forgetting how to be awesome, and this time next year, it’s probably going to be the case that there aren’t 30 forwards in the NHL better than Jonathan Huberdeau.
But he sure wasn’t top -30 this year.
As for the Cinderellas, you nailed it - the 2004 Flames were the least talented group to make finals this century. Worse than Anaheim, worse than Montreal.
Except, they had a top-3 (for a moment, arguably top-1) player in the world, and a goalie who, though he wasn’t quite 33/39/30 level, was certainly top-5 at his position. I can’t think of too many other guys from this era that I’d start over 34.
Those are two pretty significant equalizers, especially when you give them to a coach like Darryl.
When you have that, plus Regehr anchoring the back end in an era when you could do unchecked violence to a man so long as the puck was in his vicinity, you see how a group with the Rocket Richard winner + not a single other 20g scorer (or 50 point player) nearly (did) win the Stanley Cup.