Quote:
Originally Posted by Barnet Flame
I’m happy for you. I’m happy for Bennett and Tkachuk.
I wanted them to experience success last year and with the way things are going with a the potential timeline, I want that by a factor of a thousand this year. I’ll cheer them to the rafters.
But.
Underneath all of that, there is a fire burning. Anger. Regret. A loathing for how inexplicably bad, we managed our team to build something special for yours. It sickens me.
I’ve never felt such a conundrum of conflicting emotions in any other sphere of life. Potential elation for Florida with a burning feeling of pain for what we lost, concurrent and explosive.
A feeling of joy? Sick to my stomach?
Both. And ultimately it sucks.
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There is nothing there for you. The Flames clearly had many good to great players and looking back wondering what could have been is only going to give you an ulcer. The good seasons of the last build showed that they were a good team when motivated properly. However, they never seemed to have enough to get over the edge. That version of the Flames that lost to the Oilers was probably the best version of that build and I don't think that they beat the Oilers today or Vegas last year.
Florida clearly took advantage of several under-utilized players in Calgary in Bennett and Lomberg as well as making the right call to swap Matthew for Jonathan. None of those decisions were obvious at the time - particularly if you look back at the trade posts on this forum. The tougher pill to swallow is that the Flames are locked into this for quite a while and it's going to get rougher before it gets better. That's professional sports.