Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
It’s funny. They’re entering their 6th season without playoffs, the Flames are entering their 3rd.
In the 3rd season the Sharks missed the playoffs, they still had Burns, Karlsson, Meier, and Hertl. In their 4th they had also those guys minus Burns and didn’t sell Meier until late Feb.
People talk about having patience for a rebuild and praise the Sharks but we’ve shipped guys out two years faster than they did and people still complain.
The Sharks were considered a mess until they got Celebrini. Are people even capable of giving the Flames three more years to see how things play out?
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It's funny how much we discuss this, but Sharks are an example of a retool just going sideways into a full rebuild, like Calgary may end up doing.
Their 2010-2020 core got old (Thornton, Marleau, Burns and Pavelski) and they tried to stay competitive by trading the farm for Karlsson -- but fell back unexpectedly hard after the 2019 season and then nosedived until they embraced the rebuild and traded out even their youngish core that they were planning to rebuild around (Hertl and Meier).
Even Grier when he was hired talked about not planning
a full rebuild, but three days after this article, he shipped off Burns and seven months later, he sold on Meier. Karlsson rebounded and he took advantage of that, and then traded Hertl last summer to finish their bottoming out.
Retools are hard and the Flames could very much be on this path, however much Conroy wants to try to keep this ship floating.
To bring this thread back on topic, that's particularly why hoarding draft picks and drafting well has to remain a priority. They can't short change this part of the process in case the retool falls apart.