Quote:
Originally Posted by 1qqaaz
The Flames didn't draft a franchise center in their last rebuild. They only had one top 5 pick. Not putting all the blame on Bennett, but without him succeeding, there was almost going to be somewhat limited playoff success.
The Flames also failed to draft/develop an elite goalie. But this is tough to criticize, because there's no way to reliably do this. Personally, I believe the problem here has been more with development than with drafting.
But these goalies are largely what end rebuilds. The Rangers got Shesterkin. Tampa got Vasilevsky. Pittsburgh got MAF back in the day. And Washington became a goalie factory in general.
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Gaudreau emerged as a bit of a unicorn, in that he did a lot of the centre work, but just wasn't big enough to play centre himself. Bennett didn't become a 1st line centre, but he became an almost ideal second line playoff centre.
The Flames had the talent, but lots of other things went wrong. It's a fine line in the NHL betweeen success and failure.