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Originally Posted by Five-hole
This is kind of the opposite of the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". What skill players have the Flames developed in this millenium?
I've discounted Tkachuk and Monahan because they were sixth overall picks, and both of whom had strong 200 ft games before they were drafted. If you want to give the Flames credit for developing Tkachuk and Monahan, go ahead. I think they would have developed anywhere and we simply didn't get in the way. That they turned into top line forwards is credit to them and not to the Flames, and I have that general view of top 10 picks across the league in any org. There are exceptions.
Where are the players who had some skill with some holes in their game that we turned into top 6 forwards or top 4 D? Outside of Gaudreau, who is there? You mentioned Andersson and Mangiapane. Mangiapane had one outlier season and is otherwise a career 20-20 guy at best. Bringing him up in my view is evidence of how much we have to scrape hte bottom of the barrel here. Andersson is a great player who exceeded his draft position, and in conjunction with Gaudreau are probably the only two examples since 2000 where the Flames hit a home run.
Is there anybody else? In literally 25 years? Where are our Pastrnaks? Ahos? Robertsons? Kucherovs? Kaprizovs? Johnstons? Datsyuks?
My view is this organization has been consistently mediocre to poor in almost every area for decades. I have some optimism because the drafting looks pretty good right now and we have been graduating prospects from the minors. But none of those prospects are high-skilled players (Coronato an exception, but again high draft pedigree).
Zayne is the most skilled prospect we've had aside from Gaudreau in 30 years, and maybe even moreso than Gaudreau. Are we going to do everything we can to make that succeed or are we going to get in the way?
As I said I haven't written this off but I am wary, and for the reasons above, I believe I have the right to be.
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Tkachuk and Monahan were not complete players by any stretch. Nor was Johnny. They all improved as pros including when on the Flames roster. To not give the organization some credit for that strongly suggests you are applying a dose of bias in your analysis.
As I just posted, the problem for the Flames was a lack of talent in the pipeline for a lot of the last couple decades because of poor drafting (Sutter) and pick deficit (BT).
I would ask the question I did earlier: what other high skilled prospects, outside of Sam Bennet, do you think the Flames developed poorly?
If there is a pattern of poor development that you suggest it is, we should be able to look back at their drafts and pick out highly skilled guys that either bombed, or moved onto other organizations and found their way.
I will call out one guy: Sven. But we are going back to 2011, so not sure how relevant, but I think Hartley really f'd that kid up.
One could also point to Juuso. I really believe his knee injury de-railed him - he never had the same mobility he did prior to that.
Perhaps there are other examples.