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Originally Posted by Bingo
There is a lot of hindsight in the Huberdeau conversation.
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People are forgetting the league-wide shock and dismay at the departures of Gaudreau and Tkachuk. Lots of media, pundits, and fans asking what was wrong with Calgary, why nobody wanted to play there. The team was becoming a punchline. The Flames braintrust was in full-on crisis mode.
Extremely unlikely the decision to extend Huberdeau was Treliving’s alone. The Flames were desperate to change the narrative about the team, and you can bet Edwards, Maloney, etc were all onboard with showing that the Flames weren’t going to roll over.
When Conroy was asked about the deals on the table for Tkachuk, he said at least one was a futures-oriented deal (we know now that was probably Carolina) but that the management team agreed that wasn’t the route they wanted to take the franchise. These big decisions of strategic direction are not one-man calls. And most of the people who made those decisions are still in their roles with the team.
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Then you don't want to risk Huberdeau walking the next year (Weegar too).
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Especially when your whole franchise is in turmoil because one of your top players just walked as a UFA. Doing it again the next off-season would have made the Flames organization look like a gong-show.