I can't see the Flames finishing out of the bottom 5 next season. Too much has to go right for them to do so.
They will finish this season somewhere between 7th and 9th last. Will the Flames be a better team next season, be about the same next season, or worse next season? I don't know about everyone else, but i am picking worse. There seems to be a very solid chance that Markstrom gets traded this off-season as well. I can't imagine the Flames being anything other than worse next season. There will have to be some career years coming out of players, or a few top-notch UFAs wanting to sign here next season, or Conroy shifting gears and trading futures for win-now players. Sure, that will increase the standings for the Flames, though I am not sure it will make much sense in the long term, however.
You have to look at the teams in the bottom 10 of the standings and go "better, same or worse" as well, to figure out if those teams are likely to improve or not. Some are wildcards for me (Anaheim - why are they still so bad?? - and Arizona - I will just call them New Edmonton from now on).
Also, this shouting down of 'rebuild' or 'scorched earth' rebuild - why bother? Before shouting down, please explain at what threshold a retool turns into a rebuild, and again at what threshold a rebuild turns into scorched earth. There is a lot of ambiguity when it comes to that. If you look around the league, even the scorched-earth rebuild teams held onto a lot of vets - it usually isn't as 'scorched earth' as that description sounds like, but again, there is a lot of room for variance between all three terms.
IMO, the Flames are practically in a scorched-earth rebuild right now, or at least they will be if Markstrom gets traded in the off-season. I guess it depends on what your own definitions are, but when the Flames in a span of 1 season trade away their #1 scorer, their #1 centre (though he wasn't playing as such), their #1 and #.. 4(?) and #5 defencemen - all for futures, that is fairly scorched-earth. They also let go a lot of older vets from the previous regime and replaced them with youth.
Flames are likely going to make further trades (outside of Markstrom as noted already) with some players that will be upcoming UFAs after next season, so there will probably be an additional sell-off next deadline.
I think this is the right way to go. I am glad that Backlund and Coleman are here. I hope Kylington is re-signed, and together with Andersson and Weegar, they keep the defence from being outright terrible while this team goes through the growing pains of having young defencemen develop.
As for the Kadri talk - I can see a parting of the ways in the upcoming off-season. Kadri did win a cup already, and if he is genuinely happy living in Calgary and sees himself settling here after his playing days are done, then the following argument is moot. However, from Kadri's perspective, does he really want to spend the next 3 years of what could be the last 3 years of his career on a team that isn't going to compete for a playoff spot, much less for the cup itself? From the Flames' perspective, do they want to hang onto a player who is doing a fantastic job at helping the kids develop (lots of credit to Kadri here), but who is looking like he will become a negative asset once the Flames are ready to compete, resulting in either living with that cap hit, buying it out or having to attach a sweetener to move him? He will be 34 before next season starts, which is included in the five seasons he has left after this one. How effective will he be at 36? Point is, there COULD be a mutually benefiting parting of the ways. I can see it either way.
I do see a bottom 5 team this upcoming season. I just don't see where the improvement is going to come from, and I can only see 2 teams that are 'for sure' going to be worse, with another 2 or 3 teams having varying degrees of question marks being in the same tier as the Flames.
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