[saillias]

3 Positives
1. No more Sutter / presumably no more toxic cloud around the team. Hopefully everyone in the dressing room is on the same side. The entire former LA Kings cadre is out.

2. speaking of the former LA Kings, someone on twitter, Dom or JFresh, has us actually better than last year in terms of estimated WAR, just on the basis of dropping Lucic/Lewis from the lineup.

3. A lot of guys from our AHL squad get a real chance now. I'm hoping the vote of confidence from Conroy who has stated they were first in the AHL and deserve a chance to make the team is encouraging to all these prospects. It depends on the year, but I've long had a theory that the Flames could blindly pick 3 guys from the AHL squad and get an equivalent or better result than what their 4th line is doing.

3 Negatives
1. Direction of the team is still unclear. It's the one thing Conroy isn't being open about, which suggests to me he doesn't really know himself. And the UFA situation is not resolved.

2. We traded our top scorer for a guy who scored 40 less points and we already had trouble scoring goals.

3. There's an assumption of bounce back. The whole team and certain individuals. but that's not inevitable. Maybe certain players are just falling off. Some guys had career years or close to it. Key players are over 30.