Quote:
Originally Posted by Badgers Nose
My take, based on what Conroy is doing, is that Treliving got things his way and that the impatience had nothing to do with ownership.
The approach was all him; ignore the scouts, chase FAs you have an irrational crush on, try to show the hockey world that you are smarter than them all. He fled to the next employer that he could fleece when he realized what a mess he created here - Toronto offered him a face-saving escape. He then proceeded to take the Leafs, an almost finished product, and distorted it with his perverse hockey proclivities. LOL
I think the only directive from ownership is to keep season ticket sales high and sell out the Dome as much as possible. Don't embarrass us.
If Conroy gets it right, and I think he will get as much time as Treliving did, Flames will be an annual playoff participant and then he can figure out how to catch lightning in a bottle to win it all. But you need that base first, absent a generational player.
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This makes no sense.
Flames ownership has demonstrated a preference to compete at nearly any expense. There’s over 20 years of evidence to support that. Treliving was here for 7 of them. Sutter, Feaster, Burke, Treliving. All of them operated under the direction to be competitive. The only time they took an intentional step back was when their hand was forced by the franchise icon getting his way out. And when there was the first sign of life, the Flames lept at it.
It’s also simplistic to compare Treliving’s situation vs. Conroy’s. They’re different. There were no plans for a new arena in 2014. I think Conroy has been granted a period of grace to ‘rebuild’. But I also bet that if the team isn’t on an upswing by the time the new arena is open we will start to see the same or similar moves Treliving, Feaster, and Sutter made (trading picks, questionable UFA signings) in an attempt to get better now.
I think it’s also inaccurate to say with Treliving the ‘approach was all him’. If you were in a place where your boss ignored you, would you stay there? Why did Conroy, Snow, Pascal, Button, Maloney, all stay for years? Just to be warm bodies in a chair? If that’s true, it sure doesn’t speak well to the Flames as a healthy organization or their prospects for success seeing as there’s significantly the same people involved. Is Conroy doing it all by himself? How do we know?
Treliving’s deserves criticism but people sure like to believe what they want to. Need that throat to choke, I guess.