Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
I don't think trying to win every year is a bad thing.
Hard to respect full on tank teams in my opinion.
But that's not to say you have to trade futures to bolster an average team to get in, and then keep yourself in sub average perpetuity.
Tighten up the asset management (which Conroy has alluded to), draft well (and get lucky) and things can turn around without purposely losing for a half decade.
Will it happen?
It'll take some luck, but the Dallas model has to be the plan if you have an older core locked up I would think.
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Why were the Flames any good at all from 2017 to 2022? Did you respect the Flames prior to that, because they actually did deliberately rebuild.
They ended the Iginla era in 2013, traded away most of the remaining vets, and ended up getting some of their highest draft picks ever in the following years (Bennett, Monahan, Tkachuck) at least 2/3 of those were foundational reasons for their change in fortunes. This is the key -- these weren't fluke draft picks from the mid to late first round, they were top 10 picks that were projected to be franchise changing --- and 2/3 were.
It was only 2 years after trading Iginla that they won a round and people were getting excited about the young nucleus of players.
Rebuilding does not mean 12 years of garbage like Buffalo. But you have to swallow a bitter pill for a few years just to get those really top end draft picks. The Flames continuing to pick mid draft is highly unlikely to yield those results.