In a recent article, Kent Wilson had some pretty good points about the state of the Flames retool, he then discussed it on Flames Nation's In The Dome:
- The Flames have 3 cohorts: veterans (29+ year olds), prime (22-27 year olds), and prospects (21 and under)
- A contending team needs to be gaining most of its production, and spend most of its cap on the prime group.
- Calgary spent 71% of its cap, and got 62% of its points from the veterans, while giving them 58% of the ice-time.
- There are still a lot of 32, 34, 36,33 year-olds on the team, despite Conroy trading a large part of the previous core.
- CGY's average age is the same as Dallas and Colorado, teams at the peak of their contention window.
- CGY's veteran cohort is going to suffer through attrition in the next 3–5 years, and they're going to get worse. If they keep Andersson they're going to get even more expansive.
- No matter what happens, the veteran cohort needs to be liquidated.
- Prime group: Wolf (pillar), Coronato (top 6, 20-30 scorer), Zary (injuries), Bahl (top 4), Sharangovich (step-back), Frost (struggle), Farabee (struggle)
- The problem for the Flames is that you can't incrementally improve the middle rotation and get them to the next level. They need elite level talent so that everyone slots better.
- He understands Conroy's point that you can't just throw away an entire season if you decide to rebuild, that you needed the veterans to instill the culture, because a team is not built on a spreadsheet, but he also pushes back on it:
- culture has to be transmissible
- If it just makes you keep the veterans around for fear of losing said culture, then it's really not that valuable
- It's Parekh's cohort of 20-year-olds that might turn into this team's contention cohort when they're at their prime, the current vets likely won't be here for that, and no one is going to remember this team 10 years down the road.
- Wolf makes bottoming out harder, he either came in 5 years too early, or 5 years too late.
- CGY's trying to not be bad instead of just trying to be great, while the NHL's system rewards teams that are terrible. Which leads to constantly being in the middle of the pack.
- The only way to get out of the middle without being bad, is to get extremely lucky with picks like Gaudreau and Kucherov in the later rounds, which come around once in a decade.
- You get about 10 stars per draft, even fewer superstars. The chances of getting franchise defining talent outside the top 10 are extremely slim as a result.
- Getting 3 stars in a draft like Dallas did is not a model, if the Flames could do that, they would've done that already. Kudos to Dallas for both finding those guys, and developing them properly.
- Making incremental improvements to a roster technically bring you closer to winning the cup, but attempting to make the team the best possible team in a future 5-year window is a much better approach.
- The Flames have accelerated a little too quickly out of the previous rebuild when they found out Gaudreau was a star. It combined with some bad luck like the Monahan injuries.
- The Flames missed an opportunity to start a rebuild once Tkachuk and Gaudreau had to move on. Now because of that they're stuck in a weird no-man's-land.
Personally, I really liked how he discussed culture, and I think that the younger players should be able to keep the culture going even once the likes of Andersson, Backlund, Coleman and Kadri are gone. That's one of the reasons I was pretty disappointed that the Flames didn't even approach Kadri with Colorado's offer(per Royale). Hopefully, this year the likes of Zary, Coronato, Sharangovich, Pospisil, Klapka, Frost and Farabee begin setting their own culture even after we move a couple of the 6 vets.
The same good points regarding a rebuild, and I'll be honest he did a very good job of selling me on it. We'll see where this organization will be headed. Hopefully they find a way to become a contender in my lifetime.