Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
By what metric are you judging their skill up front vs ours?
The Flames have nine forwards with 20 or more points while the Predators feature ten forwards with 20 or more points, but the top end of the Predators roster outproduces the Flames top end by a good margin.
You saying the Flames were more skilled on back-end prior to moving Hanifin and Tanev is also missing the impact of the top-end of their roster. Josi is a Norris Trophy defenceman. I think you're missing that Carrier, Lauzon, and Fabbro make for pretty solid depth when you have Josi doing what he does.
Elite players with good depth >> No elite players with better depth.
The top-end of your roster drives success in this league, the Flames top-end roster is pretty poor - and outright pitiful if you were to subtract Markstrom.
Predators have an elite goalie.
Flames have an elite goalie.
Predators have an elite defenceman.
Flames do not have an elite defenceman.
Predators have an elite winger.
Flames do not have an elite winger.
Neither the Flames nor the Predators have an elite centre.
Predators top-end >> Flames top-end. Making the future outlook worse for the Flames is also the fact that Markstrom is 34 and Saros is 28. Both teams have good young goalies coming in Askarov and Wolf, although I believe you'd generally see Asakarov ranked ahead of Wolf.
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Points are not the be all end all indicator of skill. Look at the Jets...until two games ago, none of their star forwards (Scheifle, Connor, Ehlers) were PPG, yet the team is amongst the top in the league in Rick Bowness' defense-first, "low event" system. Some coaching systems facilitate high scoring and others don't...there's no correlation to skill. On the Preds, Nyquist is skilled, but he was a borderline cap dump in CBJ last year. Sissons is a bottom six player. McCarron, Sherwood, and Smith were were all grinder-type tweeners until now, yet they're all playing middle six minutes. Even Reilly is more of a workman-like player than a skilled one.
Brunette has every forward on that team contributing on the scoreboard, but not a single person is looking at that forward group and thinking its skilled.
Contrast that to the Flames roster that has four former 30-goal scorers (Huberdeau, Kadri, Mangiapane, and Kuzmenko) and three 20-goal scorers (Coleman, Sharangovich, and Backlund), but is in the bottom half of the league for scoring.
Josi is a great "have" on defense for the Preds, but they are really thin on defense. Players like Lauzon and Fabbro can take regular minutes, but there is a reason why they have never played higher than third pairing. They're just not that good.
The Flames' defense at the start of the season with Weegar, Hanifin, Andersson, and Tanev was one of the deepest in the league, yet they were among the leakiest teams in the league for GA right up until the trade deadline. That's a coaching issue with Huska's passive zone defense scheme. Let's also not forget that Weegar was 7th and 14th in Norris voting before coming to Calgary, but doesn't look quite as good in the Flaming C as he did for Florida.
The Flames might not have a MacKinnon/Makar type gamebreaker, but there is more skill on the roster than what we're seeing on the ice. With the exception of Sutter (except his stubborness last year), coaching continues to be an achilles heel for this team and probably will continue to be an issue until they pony up the $$$ for a real coach instead of the value options like Huska, Ward, GG, etc.