I am very happy with what I think has been a sensible rebuild by Conroy. He flat out stated he was not going to lose his players for nothing like Treliving did and he also wanted to integrate young players in the lineup.
He has gone out to try and fill the gap of middle 20’s skaters by acquiring Sharangovich, Bahl, Frost and Farabee. Mixed bag of results and cost there.
I think he did a nice job of getting futures in the Markstrom, Lindholm, and Manhiapane deals. I thought he could have got more for Tanev, Zadorov, Hanifin, Toffoli at the time but I am glad he was able to get assets for those guys.
He has integrated young players like Wolf, Zary, Coronato. Now guys like Parekh, Honzek, and Gridin are getting looks.
He has picked 5x in the first round in his 3 drafts as GM and has 2 picks this upcoming year with assets to move to get more. The 2024 draft looked great from day 1 and has aged fairly well. I am just trusting that he has a good pulse on what we need now and moving forward.
The Flames of Old would have looked at last year and gone all in (Feaster for sure would have been selling last year as a launch pad). Conroy has been a little more guarded in his words. His actions speak even louder when he had assets and space to make this team immediately better but when his targets don’t land he showed restraint and do not overspend on someone who wasn’t the ideal fit.
I do believe bottoming out this year will respond with aggressive moves to get out of the basement but with the added assets coming in, a ton of caps space, and a nice pool of prospects Conroy will have as much ammo as any Flames GM in recent memory to go try and steal a RFA from another team
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