Whatever happens this season, happens. Whether they make the playoffs (hooray!) or end up with a top 10 pick (hooray!) or finish in the middle (boo!). They still walk out of this season with their young guys taking a step forward and 2 first round picks for the upcoming draft. There is a lot of reasons to be excited about this team, period.
As for 'tanking' - if you are going to do it, next year is the year to do it anyway. I am not convinced that Conroy's plan was to really be competitive this season anyway. Can the Flames repeat this next season? Also, repeat what exactly? We don't know how the Flames will finish. I wonder what Conroy does this off-season. Maybe he improves the team and really does intend to rebuild on the fly, or maybe he knocks out an important peg or two (or even does it at the trade deadline this year?), and the team finishes lower in the standings next season by design. Maybe the Flames have a worse defence next season than this season, with just as much trouble scoring. Wolf won't factor-in so much.
What we know is that Conroy wants to keep the culture going and have this team competing hard most nights, and Huska - along with leadership team - has made sure that is happening. Conroy is also not going to make short-term 'win now' moves either. He has stated numerous times that he wants to build through the draft, so I don't think you will see him trade much in the way of futures for win-now players. Frost and Farabee were good depth adds that should be here through the rebuild and probably beyond.
I am just going to give this an open mind - let's see how Conroy handles the trade deadline, the draft, and what moves he makes this off-season. No need to panic, or get angry, or get into random heated arguments.
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