From the HAT's mailbag
https://theathletic.com/4724482/2023...-office-kings/
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what I’m discovering more and more is a far greater appetite than there once was — among readers, fans and even teams themselves — for the sort of complete makeover that Flyers GM Daniel Briere did to his team in June.
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he made his team a lot worse — and everybody seemed to love it!
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All of which is very appealing in theory. Complete do-over. Out with the old and in with the new.
The problem is the successful execution can be so difficult to complete.
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The reality is a strict draft-and-develop strategy is more likely to head in the direction it did with L.A. — where the results have been very mixed.
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Drafting is an inexact science. If you put all your faith in that path alone, and you get the usual share of hits and misses, you can spin and sputter just as badly as the teams desperately trying to stay in their Stanley Cup windows a year or two longer than maybe they should have. That’s what you learn from a sober look back at draft history.
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GMs often get criticized for being gun-shy about rebuilds, but all of them have studied draft outcomes. They see what happens when the hype and promise of draft day slowly dissolves and then the hard work of turning these young raw talents into productive difference-making NHLers begins. The results are often not very pretty.
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Have to believe that the Flames organization is thinking this exact way.
Keep your good players, change them out when they age, become to expensive, or don't want to stay. Bring in younger players that can play and have upside and continue to be competitive.
Tear it to the ground, burn it to ash, and piss on the ashes kind of rebuild that most fans want to see does not work the majority of the time and teams will only embark on the path if there is no way forward. They would prefer to retool and renovate than rebuild. This is the direction the Flames are going.