[FanIn80]

Fact: The Flames ownership and upper management have never once formally acknowledged a rebuild or even used the word rebuild in any way other than to deny that a rebuild is happening.

Fact: Both the Flames ownership and upper management have, just within the last two weeks, publicly stated that there is no interest in anything other than keeping the pieces we have, adding to them and finding a way to start winning games.

Fact: At the season ticket event ("Bonfire") during training camp, Huska, Conroy and Maloney each talked about the plan for this season, which was to continue from where they left off last season with the goal of making the playoffs.

Fact: Any vets that have been traded in recent years have been at the request of the players themselves. Either by demanding a trade or by telling management they had no intention of re-signing. A few of the players were even kept around until the very last possible minute, and were only traded when all efforts to convince them to stay had failed.

Fact: When those above trades took place, the focus was on brining back a young reclamation project who could take the departing player's place, and continue the goal of trying to make the playoffs. Contrast that with other teams who are rebuilding, who intentionally traded away their vets (at the teams' decision) and did so with the focus of getting the best draft capital they could acquire - often by taking on post-prime players on bad contracts as part of the deal to maximize the return of draft capital.

Fact: The teams referenced above have either bought out some of those contracts or pushed those post-prime players down to the bottom of their lineups in favour of playing and developing the new, younger core they have drafted.

Fact: Those teams have employed coaching staffs that are focused on developing their new cores at the NHL level, with winning games taking a backseat to player development - which has often resulted in consecutive years of drafting in the top three, and adding even more top-tier talent to their cores.

Fact: The Flames have done none of those things, and often go into each training camp promising to come out with drafted players playing prominent roles, only for the obvious to actually happen: too many vets with multi year contracts taking up all the lineup spots, with young players used sporadically in and out of the lineup depending on injuries etc. Even then, the vets at the bottom of the lineup are often move up to fill holes, and the young call ups take their spots in the bottom six.

Fact: The Flames made a big deal of publicly celebrating Gridin and Parekh making the opening night roster, but those of us who have been around this organization for a long time knew that Gridin only "made it" because Huberdeau and Pospisil were hurt. We also knew that Parekh only made the team because the sending him back to junior would have made him unavailable to the Flames for the entire season, and he wasn't allowed to play in the minors. To none of us' surprise, he opened the season in the pressbox, and was used very sporadically in limited roles - because this team is not focused on developing Parekh at the NHL level, they are focused on winning games, making the playoffs and being a contender.

People are going to argue against all of these facts, and in spite of the owners telling us there is no rebuild, upper management telling us there is no rebuild, the roster and lineup decisions made by the team telling us there is no rebuild... they're going to adamantly deny all of it and say there is a rebuild. I don't know why those people insist on that course of action, when it's in everyone's best interest to let this organization know we want actual changes, not more of the same "changes" that we see year after year, where the names and faces are exchanged but the methods and the results are always the same.

Yes, there are a lot of us who are happy right now when we lose games. It's not because we hate the team or because we're anarchists hoping for destruction. It's because this is a very big draft coming up, and every loss is like the hockey gods stepping in and taking things out of the hands of the organization and forcing a top 3 pick on us - because we know this team will do everything they can to screw things up if left to their devices. For years we wanted to trade guys out, but the team refused until the players forced them to trade them. We would still be watching a team of Lindholm, Hanifin, Markstrom, etc today if that didn't happen. So losses are worth celebrating, because each one that happens brings us closer and closer to finally getting game-breaking top-tier offensive threat that we desperately need.


For the record, I like Conroy and I like Huska. Unfortunately, their orders are very clearly "keep your players and win hockey games." Which means boring, low-event hockey because we don't have the skill for any other way to compete, and middle of the pack finishes preventing us from getting any skill. That's why I keep saying nothing's going to change until ownership relents and allows for a rebuild to happen. In the meantime, losing games forces us to draft in the top three, and that's about all we can ever hope for.