Quote:
Originally Posted by dammage79
I'd also like to add I am big fan #1 of this franchise landing a top 3 overall pick. But I also accept that it's not gonna happen under the Flames own choosing. Other teams have to grind this team into dust for that to happen. And good luck doing that since this scrappy ragtag group managed to land 96 points while being 3rd worst in the league at scoring.
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More to the point, Conroy is unable to "grind the team into dust" thanks to the contract structures that he inherited from Treliving. The OP clearly forgets what Conroy walked into a fully built team that had just lost two of it's "best line in the league" but otherwise should have been able to make the playoffs. The reason they didn't make the playoffs is because their new star player completely fell apart and dragged the team down with him, initiating the need to rebuild.
Being locked into Huberdeau, Kadri, Coleman, Weegar, etc. were not choices that Conroy made and the NMC/NTC that those players had created boundaries around what he could and could not do. This is why they are saying "retool" instead of "rebuild" because most fans view a rebuild as the act of burning the team to the ground and sucking hard for years to draft high calibre players.
The retool is still a rebuild but we are locked into enough talented players that we unlikely to end up with a #1OA draft pick. Also, on top of the talented vets we have a new crop of talented young players joining the team and creating upward momentum instead of downward (Wolf, Coronato, etc).
There is a clear direction, the problem is a lot of fans do not agree with it, likely because they do not understand the parameters of the situation.