i was glad that Conroy explained what he meant by retool and rebuild. My own terminology is a bit different than his.
Retool: A large change usually from a hockey trade in the off-season to your core. You do it in the off-season really, and hope for a better season.
Rebuild: You sell vets for draft picks/young guys. Takes a few seasons.
Scorched earth: Purposeful tanking that lasts at least 5 years. You are selling anything of any value at all with the intent of making your club terrible to increase your own draft picks, as well as adding any draft picks possible.
I didn't think the Flames would ever be doing a scorched earth. They didn't last time either. My gripe with how Treliving handled the last rebuild is that I thought he didn't prioritize the draft enough and artificially came out of it too early (like the Hamonic deal, for instance).
The 'Dallas blueprint" is a fine way to look at it. I just look at it as the Flames in a rebuild, period, and what they have to do is draft their next core. I think they have enough good young pieces from previous drafts that will go a long way in supporting their future core - 2nd line players, 2nd pairing defencemen (and maybe more on both fronts, but nobody you really lock into as a franchise type yet). They just need to find blocks to actually build around.
I don't think this is going to be a long rebuild. They have too many good pieces already, unless they take it down to the studs. I do think that next season they will bottom out (though I wish it was the 2026 season with who will be going 1st). I think the Flames will still be in the bottom 10 in the 2026 season, but rising.
The most important thing is to not come out of this simply as a younger version of how you went in - just a mediocre-talented team that needs to out-work opponents most nights to win. They need the difference makers who can win a game even when the players bring their B game. You want to make sure that your culture is one that works hard every night. It just impossible to out-work every team every night. Then you get to the playoffs, and you just end up facing a team that wants it just as badly as you do, who is willing to work as hard as you do, but they have the elite-talent on top of their willingness to work.
Flames are a fantastic drafting team, so I am sure they will find enough talent in the next 3 drafts or so, plus from elsewhere. Let's just not speed things up too much and changing gears too fast into 'win now' mode before this team shows you that it is a good team. I disagree that you should spend futures on an improving team who is rather mediocre still. You need to build a team up first, then once they show you that they are a good team, that's when you flip the switch and do what you can to make them great.
I think Conroy has it right. I have never really agreed with a scorched earth rebuild before.
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