The Flames absolutely should 'sacrifice' this season - And more aptly put, the Flames should weaponize their potential cap space with all the upcoming UFA's they have
The Flames should trade EVERY UFA this offseason as well as Vladar (Excluding Kylington as who knows what will happen this year but I'll pencil him onto the team for now).
I'm not going to speculate on returns , that's the GM's job to get the best returns. But let's make a statement that every trade is for picks and players who are not going to be in the NHL next season for simplicity of this exercise.
That would leave the Flames with the following roster:
Huberdeau (10.5) Kadri (7) Mangi (5.8)
Coleman (4.9) XXX Dube (2.3)
Coranto (.925) Ruzicka (.760) Pelletier (.860)
Duehr (.825) XXX XXX
Hanifin (6.25) Andersson ( 4.55)
Kylington (2.5) XXX
XXX XXX
Markstrom (6)
Wolf (.813)
Cap Hit: 54 million
Cap Room : 29.5 million
Now take that cap room and weaponize it to trade for good / breakout candidate from other teams that they need to 'dump' and stabilize the roster.
Some examples from last offseason
Fiala for Faber and a 1st
Monahan for a 1st
Bjorkstrand for a 3rd and 4th
Connor Brown for a 2nd
Pacioretty for futures
Brent Burns for 3rd and parts
You can also retain on trades if it increases the return, and also dip into short term UFA's like what we did with Zadorov and Gudbranson (2 years max)
The Flames need to start thinking more progressive instead of overpaying long term FA deals and locking up their older players to long term deals.
I know they won't go this direction, but this is actually the teams best chance to avoid an eventual drawn out long and painful rebuild with a quicker rebuild, but also if you pick the right players to use the open cap space on, even compete for a wild card spot if things go right. And if they don't? You sell more assets at the deadline and take a great draft pick to inject into the younger core
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