Quote:
Originally Posted by TOfan
Just to play devils advocate here, the next time the Flames picked 6OA, they got Tkachuk. Pretty strong case to be made that in a redraft, he goes 2OA.
Agreed that the simple premise of the higher you pick, the better odds you have of picking a franchise changing player but in many, if not most, drafts, there’s a player or two who should have gone much higher and in some instances near or at the top of the draft.
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You can get really good players outside of the top 3-5, but it's a weak strategy for trying to get those players. It relies on a lot of luck and can't really be planned for. Even the year we drafted Tkachuk, it relied on Vancouver supposedly drafting for position and taking Juolevi.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
I don't think Gaudreau was.
If they would have offered Gaudreau 8 x $9 in the 2021 offseason he would have been a Flames player still.
Once his wife got pregnant, and the Flames walked him right up to UFA, it changed the equation.
Tkachuk probably always was.
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I guess nobody really knows how things would have went. There was a time that Tkachuk wanted to sign a longer term deal and wanted the captaincy. If Tkachuk was signed to a longer deal, maybe Gaudreau would have signed on the summer before the season started knowing that Tkachuk was locked in. Or maybe if Gaudreau was signed on, Tkachuk decides to stay. I know that Tkachuk stated Johnny leaving had nothing to do with his reasoning, but I take it with a grain of salt because even if it did, it would be pretty crass to put that on him. Personally, I suspect it was part of the reasoning. That final season must have been really fun for them as that line was one of the best lines in the NHL over that past several years. Knowing that was done probably made it easier for Tkachuk to pull the plug as well, combined with him initially not getting the deal he wanted.
I really don't think anything was predetermined, but there was probably little room for management to mess around with it either.