[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by bigrangy

Which should have required the Canucks to pay appropriately to do so, which they didn’t. The Flames (if they were a well run hockey team) would have no problems retaining half of Lindholm to make it work, not taking on a cap dump for essentially free instead.

Even the maximum retention would not have been enough to keep the Canucks cap-compliant. They also needed to shed an actual player salary.

Where is the value Calgary got for helping Vancouver out of the Kuzmenko contract? It’s just not there. 1st+Bruzustewicz+depth pick/prospect was the absolute bare minimum for what Lindholm should have returned on his own.

It was more than any other team offered. Your opinion doesn't trump the actual market.

So now we get the honor of having to deal with Kuzmenko

Whom you assume, against the evidence, to be useless.

and didn’t get paid a penny to deal with it. Better players have been dumped for more than it took to add Kuzmenko to this trade.

How do you know how much it took to add Kuzmenko to the trade? Do you have information on an alternative offer that did not include Kuzmenko? If not, you have no grounds for complaint.

[QUOTE]But Calgary is not a well run team, they need to “keep a competitive team on the ice”.

And so management sees Kuzmenko as being a drop in replacement for Lindholm more or less, just like they (to some success, so far) saw Sharangovich as a drop in replacement for Toffoli.

They clearly do not see him as that, or they wouldn't have demanded (and received) four other assets along with him. For that matter, they didn't see Sharangovich as a ‘drop-in replacement for Toffoli’.

The mandate is not to get any worse on the ice while moving these players that don’t want to be here long term.

That's your assumption. That's not what Conroy is saying, and it isn't what he's doing.

The futures returns in these trades are secondary to management’s apparent need to have a fresh body take the place of the old one.

Every NHL team is required to dress 20 players for a game, and if it has an AHL affiliate, it has to provide enough players for that as well. The Flames have only 43 players under contract now, which is barely enough to do that. They do actually need to have bodies coming back in trades.

It’s not the worst strategy overall but it is one that keeps the team away from the ultimate goal. This team still needs two franchise players, every good team has 2.

A franchise player is supposed to be a player who makes or breaks a franchise all by himself. By definition, if you need two of them, they aren't franchise players.

You get them at the draft, and you most often get them in the top 5. This team is never going to aim to pick top 5, as evidenced by these trades that are placing value on the return’s ability to contribute on the ice vs it’s ability to contribute in the future.

No team ever aims to pick top 5. That's a fan fantasy.

To use an analogy, the Flames are investing everything in a GIC. “It’s steady, safe, free money” they say, as they lose year over year to inflation. The team needs to gamble a little bit if they ever want to become a premier team.

That's a piss-poor analogy. Managing a hockey team is nothing like building an investment portfolio.