Important to note that five years ago the Flames were still fighting through a rebuild and had a bunch of aging vets nearing the end of their contracts (or just on shorter-term deals): Jiri Hudler, David Jones, Dennis Wideman, Mason Raymond, Jonas Hiller, Deryk Engelland, and Matt Stajan, to name a few.
The Flames of today are a ridiculously young team. The guys who really fit that description of older vets are the top three defensemen, Lucic, Ryan, Talbot, maybe Backlund, and Frolik. But everyone really important fits into the long-term window. This isn't the 2014 team where both the leading scorers up front and on defense were out of the league two years later. Gaudreau, Monahan, Tkachuk, Hanifin, Valimaki, Andersson, Dube, Rittich, Bennett, and Lindholm all seem like pretty safe bets to be here for a while, and they're all projected as core members of the team.
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