Quote:
Originally Posted by Calgary4LIfe
This is a very curious situation in my mind.
They are rebuilding without ever announcing a rebuild. If the Flames do end up bottoming-out this season, they can announce a rebuild then, and a large portion of the fanbase will decide that this is where the rebuild starts. If they don't announce it, they can just trot-out the 'unexpected' and 'disappointing season', but then inject a top-end talent onto the roster (plus Wolf - Parekh - Gridin) and sell that to the ticket-buying fan base.
I don't really like the fact that they have come out and stated that this season is 'unexpected' - it seems like a greasy 'used car salesman' move in a way. There are never any promises at the start of a season (none that I have seen anyway), so I guess it is somewhat moot (but feels greasy).
I doubt at this point hat they ever announce a rebuild, regardless if they finish last or not. They are sowing a lot of confusion within the fan base (as we can see even on these boards, where a certain percentage are convinced a rebuild has been underway, and a certain percentage don't seem to be convinced still).
Definitely an interesting way to go about a rebuild. I wonder how the ticket sales have been going so far this season as compared to the last few. I wonder how much of a boost they get next season. From an entertainment and/or winning standpoint, this is the hardest season to stomach really - losing and not being entertaining. Next season should be more entertaining at least, and I assume ticket sales will reflect that. Would be interesting to compare ticket sales in this period vs the ticket sales over the last time the Flames rebuilt.
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And if I was to guess as to what the statement would have been if they were injected with truth serum ...
"Frankly we expected to be terrible last year, truly. But then a bunch of vets and Huska's defensive system kept us in it all year and moved us away from the top ten pick we expected. So we left it this year thinking law of averages probably takes us downward, but didn't add because we are clearly in a rebuild/retool window and want to keep the draft capital and not tie ourselves to contracts that will be hard to get rid of when we need the cap space"