The flames clearly are not leaning into a strip down to the studs and build it back up but more of a rebuild on the fly approach which means they will move on from vets if they are not part of the plans or willing to stay and are only looking to add young players to the core.
Conroy’s first year he moves Toffoli, Zadorov, Lindholm, Hanifin, Tanevand outside of Sharangovich and Kuzmenko all the pieces received were picks and prospects. He did not want to lose these assets for nothing so he got futures based returns and that team had a rough year and picked 9th in the draft
The following summer he moved Markstrom and Mangiapane and only received Bahl back as a roster player. The team did have Wolf and Coronato/Zary ready to step into those roles so they moved off the vets. Important to note that a year previously Markstrom was a negative asset so Conroy took advantage to sell high and make arguably his best trade.
This summer with the team having Parekh waiting to be unleashed and Andersson coming up on a ln extension the topic of trading him is front and center it will happen.
Buy what is not happening is the organization seeing a league where no one is looking to sell and deciding they will not change their path and try and tape advantage of that to try and cash in further on their vets to position themselves for a high pick next year. They prefer to address pieces when required either due to someone on the farm being ready or the veterans contract being up for extension.
I think the mandate is to be able to sell hype and hope for the new building. Ideally in hindsight they tear it down 3 years ago but in order to be a team to sell hope around in 2027 they do not have time to execute a full year down and build up so I think they continue this model they are doing now which I think has potential to payoff as long as they make multiple picks in the first 2 rounds over several drafts.
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