Quote:
Originally Posted by gvitaly
The first thing that Brad said after Gaudreau left was that he's not going to overreact. Signing Huberdeau to an 8 year deal before watching him play a game was an overreaction! If Tre didn't want the risk of the guys he brought in a trade leaving, then he shouldn't have traded for upcoming UFAs.
The trade for Tkachuk itself was great. The Flames got great value, and flexibility by that move. They lost a lot of that flexibility before the off-season was over. They did it by signing Huberdeau, by trading Monahan and signing Kadri, which was also a bit of an overreaction IMO.
I was happy with those moves as well, mostly because I didn't want to see the Oilers send the Flames into a rebuild after how the playoffs went. Hindsight 20/20 those extra $7M-$17.5M in cap space could've really helped the Flames in this off-season, and really sped up any potential retool.
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But Tre actually DID see him play before signing him. He saw what his scouts and the rest of the NHL saw- a LW that put up 115 points, including the record for most assists in a season by a LW with 85, playing with Bennett and Duclair. There was reason to believe that he would have great production on a Sutter team that tilted the ice night after night with a fast transition/ puck possession game. It was dumb-ass Sutter that decided we needed to change the offensive scheme to a high shot volume system because we apparently "lacked offensive talent".