Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
I crave the Colorado, Tampa Bay, Florida route.
Which is the same as the Buffalo and Edmonton routes, just with less incompetence.
When you look at Tampa and Florida - they didn't really do anything unachievable in Calgary. Florida managed to woo Bobrovsky - that's the biggest thing that Calgary likely couldn't do (and it shouldn't be downplayed, he was huge in their success).
What Tampa and Florida did so well was draft their foundational players, do well throughout the rest of the draft, and made aggressive GOOD trades. Paying a premium for a salary retained Blake Coleman as an example for Tampa, and acquiring Reinhart and Bennett in Florida's build. On the flip side of this, Edmonton has done a bunch of dumbass stuff like pay bad free agents (Campbell), make brutally bad trades (Athanasiou), and manage their internal cap structure very poorly (hello Nurse). Buffalo and Edmonton both share a strong lack of ability on the draft floor as well (prior to Kevyn Adams at least, verdict is out on him so far). They can't draft worth a damn outside of picking in the top-5, and this isn't a problem the Flames have. The biggest problem with the Flames is lack of opportunity to draft in the top-5.
I'm confident in Conroy and the Flames scouting staff IF they have the opportunity to make those top 5 picks. If they get the opportunity to draft twice in the Top-5, especially in the next few years, I believe Conroy can build a Championship team because the Flames do a lot of the other stuff well already. They just need the opportunity.
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Tre cornered himself with a lot of stupid UFA signings and terrible coaching choices.
Just don't do those two things (the first is a hell of a lot easier than the second, to be fair) and Calgary should be okay.