[Heavy Jack]

Is pain&suffering legitimately a tag in this thread that’s hilarious. Can we all just sit back and consider things since the all-star break of 18/19 season- where we finished 1st in the west - and the proceeding downward trend in the 2nd half into the playoffs upset against 8th seeded Colorado.

- Clearly something happened to that team and Peters coming out of the break, Neal not panning out while everyone else did didn’t help things but by the playoffs the team was nothing close to what we saw in the first half of that season which was pure magic.

- Proceeding season sees the Peters embarrassment unfold which to me speaks a bit to the above… it takes time for things like this to be fully realized and hockey is a small community at times especially at that level so maybe there were rumblings that players could have been hearing? Could explain the disconnect with Peters during the Flames best season in decades (again only three seasons removed) Flames switch to a head coach interim role in Wardo…covid hits and throws the whole season into turmoil. Bubble season happens and the Flames blow it at the end of game 4 in round 1 otherwise looking poised to go on a run of sorts.

- Proceeding season sees the Flames go with Ward as full time head coach on a revised onetime division and shortened season schedule due to covid that many had us as the 2nd or 3rd best threat coming from the Canadian division. Of course the flames fell flat on their face while saving face at the end and brining in Sutter to try and take advantage of the back half of this 5 year window that they had started when they made the splash for Lindholm/Hanifin/Ryan/Neal that off season.

The flames have never had a good chance to recover from the Peters fiasco and all that came with it and I do truly feel like it played somewhat of a role in the downward trend in performance after the all star break 18/19 players are still human and that was no doubt an awkward and tough thing to deal with. Add to that covid happening same season and I can understand why the team underperformed last year but honestly we are not too far removed from being a dominant team and the playing field is going to normalize again with the full schedule so I think that the OP is severely negative and isn’t considering a lot of what’s transpired the past few season for the Flames.

I predict playoffs and a round 1 win for the Flames myself, in a lot of ways we are better right now than that first half team of 18/19 which truly excites me.