[CSharp]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

It's easy to dump on Treliving in hindsight, but there was some really unfortunate timing that played into it (because the Flames curse dictates that this must be so)

You have the Gaudreau and Tkachuk events, so Treliving makes a trade for Tkachuk, and gets what the vast majority of the hockey world thought was a great return, considering the circumstances.
And due to the makeup of the team, mostly built for the now, he got a 'now' return.
And with the recent fiasco of Gaudreau leaving for nothing, he made sure to ink Huberdeau immediately (at the time, most agreed that was the prudent play.
Treliving also saw that he needed another C, since Monahan wasn't able to fill that role, and Kadri was available, so he went out and got him. Again, this was a reasonable decision, considering the win-now makeup of the team.
In order to make room for Kadri, Treliving decided to move Monahan.
Unfortunately, all of this happened during the year where cap space was at its highest premium, and worst pressure. And as it turned out, he moved Monahan for cap space at the moment in history when it was the most expensive to do so.

At the time, those decisions were all reasonable - you could argue whether they were good, but they were at least reasonable. Except for the Monahan one - that was a steep price to pay.

And then the team fell flat on its face.

And say what you want about the decisions, we shouldn't blame Treliving for the team doing that. Their play last year is on them. These decisions you can blame Treliving for, but not that.

Well, we can't go back in time to correct anything and the 20-20 hindsight all points to those events from Tre making bad decisions that pretty much led to one another and then other bad decisions arising that were already bad. If you lose 2 of your top stars (one for nothing) and the makeup of the team tells you that the team is not a cup contender anymore and the upcoming draft the following year was a generational draft year, one would hope that this would be a huge opportunity consideration to actually build for the future and not just for the present. Nope, Tre still pursued trades to go for the playoff run. He had all the chances during mid-season to sell and tank. In the end, we come to the same point as we did 2 years ago. From the time that Tre took over, the Flames rebuild process pretty much stopped. It was like Sutter fitting in pieces that may fit and hope to make the playoffs every year just to get bounced in the first round, that's it. This is something that I hope Conroy has learned, never lowball your superstar franchise players and don't go out looking for a superstar goalie to mask the deficiencies of the team.