Yeah it is kind of funny that two posters who were arguing that 'this team just isn't talented enough' a couple weeks ago in the fire Gulutzan discussions, are suddenly leading the charge for the 'Treliving needs to go all in right now' view.
Gaudreau, Monahan, Bennett, Tkachuk, Brodie, Hamilton and Hamonic are not 'in' their primes, they are all 'entering' their primes.
This team is just at the beginning of a 5 - 10 year period of being an upper echelon team.
Of course there will be changes: Giordano will not be a top pairing defenseman forever; Backlund is in his prime right now; Frolik is on the back side of the hill; Smith is in his twilight.
But all teams go through that. There will be replacements for these guys as the team moves forward. But they have a young core that is going to be the foundation for good teams for many years to come. Busting that up to try and get all their chips on the table for this year, as though it is some fleeting opportunity that they need to take advantage of or it will be gone, completely misses the mark, IMO.
Also, the strength of the current team is their defense. Yes, they got off to a bad start (great discussion with Sarich on 960 this morning by the way), but they are rolling now. Since Dec 4th, they are second in the league defensively. Breaking that up, in order to add a scoring winger, seems short-sighted and undirectional to me.
What the Flames should be trying to do, IMO, is ADD to this core. If they can bring in a scoring winger without giving up a key piece or busting up the defensive core that they have built, that could really elevate them into contender status right away. Easier said than done though.
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