What is Success?

[Philly06Cup]

Take a 3-year window, or a 5-year window. Winning a cup qualifies as success. Failing that, is there anything the team can do in that window where you would deem it a success?

[Locke]

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

Take a 3-year window, or a 5-year window. Winning a cup qualifies as success. Failing that, is there anything the team can do in that window where you would deem it a success?

Play entertaining hockey. If the team wins the Cup that would be amazing but the odds are not good for any team let alone a small market Canadian team. If the team plays up to their potential and plays hard every game that is successful to me.

[memphusk]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

Take a 3-year window, or a 5-year window. Winning a cup qualifies as success. Failing that, is there anything the team can do in that window where you would deem it a success?

San Jose was Successful but tried to hang on for too long. They were a respected team anyways.

[memphusk]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

Play entertaining hockey. If the team wins the Cup that would be amazing but the odds are not good for any team let alone a small market Canadian team. If the team plays up to their potential and plays hard every game that is successful to me.

This is also fair. Thats also what some youth brings.

[Hockey_Ninja]

Consistency

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

Take a 3-year window, or a 5-year window. Winning a cup qualifies as success. Failing that, is there anything the team can do in that window where you would deem it a success?

I’d say that in a 5-year window, if a team wins its division a couple times and makes the conference finals a couple times, it has had a successful run.

[Hackey]

Success I think would be building a team that legitimately has a shot for an extended period of time. Which would mean you're winning the division consistently every year, you're winning or at the top of the conference every year, you win a round, two, or three, consistently. Obviously you might have off years for whatever reason but at least be hovering around contender status consistently for 5-10 years. Winning the Cup is extremely difficult but give yourself the best opportunity. To me the best way to achieve this is a ground up rebuild. It's no guarantee, nothing is, but the come up of that team would be exciting and hopefully you have sustained success for a period of time that ultimately leads to winning it all. And even if you dont I think you have a lot of entertaining hockey for a good 10 year stretch. That would be success in my opinion.

[Parallex]

Ultimately it's the Cup and only the Cup.

Now, since no one wants to feel like a failure for decades straight we have to all pretend that something else qualifies and for the Calgary Flames (at present) that means an entertaining regular season followed by a playoffs where the team progresses past the 1st round. I said at present earlier because the line depends on context.

[Tkachukwagon]

Beating the Oilers

[Macho0978]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

Take a 3-year window, or a 5-year window. Winning a cup qualifies as success. Failing that, is there anything the team can do in that window where you would deem it a success?

Being truly a cup contender for parts of a decade is what I'm looking for. We have had good seasons but typically follow them up with a poor season. We made the playoffs 5 years in a row starting in 2004. But lost in the first round 4 times and barely made the playoffs the last 3 years.

I'd love to be the next Tampa or Chicago or Pittsburgh. But there are tons of teams that haven't won but have had stretches that they are at the top of the league. We haven't done that in 3 decades.

When you see teams like New Jersey go from the bottom to the top, not be a top destination for UFA's and have a ton still coming it makes you wonder why not the Flames?

[Ford Prefect]

Success is pinching a girl’s butt in a bar and ending up having her go home with you.

[The Cobra]

Originally Posted by Ford Prefect

Success is pinching a girl’s butt in a bar and not having her file a lawsuit against you.

Corrected for accuracy.

[Reggie Dunlop]

[Ford Prefect]

That was a long time ago that happened for me. Things have changed since then alright. Not always for the better.

[DJones]

Prospects forming the new core imo. We need to hit on a few of our current prospects.

Don't do that and it'll be an inevitable slow decline before finally blowing it up.

Wolf is legit. Corronato and Pelletier become solid top 6 players. Team immediately becomes more interesting.

[Coach]

If you expect a cup in every 3-5 year window of whatever your current iteration of your "core" is, you're going to live a life of disappointment. Winning a Cup would be amazing, but it's always a longshot. To me, success is being fun to watch and growing internal stars we can love. Usually that leads to at least a chance to win on the ice.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

Play entertaining hockey. If the team wins the Cup that would be amazing but the odds are not good for any team let alone a small market Canadian team. If the team plays up to their potential and plays hard every game that is successful to me.

Hard disagree. There has been plenty of Flames' teams over the past few decades where you could argue they had little success but were fun to watch. Sounds to me like the Iggy era post ' 06. I mean sure, those teams were fun to watch. Fun players and great offence. Cool to see some players get trophy nominations. But most Flames' fans would argue those times were actually a waste of those player's primes and that those teams underachieved greatly and were overall extremely disappointing. Watching your team score a ton of goals gets washed out when you get bumped in round 1...again. At some point, winning rounds makes your team successful.

I view a franchise as the LVK as extremely successful. Multiple division titles, multiple rounds won, multiple WCF appearances, multiple finals' appearances. Not really any stand out super star, but a team that knows how to play as a unit. Just gunning for a team that's fun to watch, and that's all, sets the bar quite low. I'm tired of this franchise setting the bar low. If that's the case, might as well have a run 'n' gun team and score as many goals as possible and pray your goalie stands on it's head.

Winning is entertaining. If we can somewhat the model the LVK franchise since their inception, I would greatly consider that as successful.

[Winsor_Pilates]

Success depends on where you are at; you have to set the goalposts accordingly.

2 years ago I would have said a longer playoff run, at least making a conference final.
After losing to Edmonton, I wanted to more or less run things back with that team as I felt they could get there and achieve that success.
Recent division titles, a couple 100 point superstars and lots of other good parts had my goalposts pretty high for that team.

Now with the reality of our roster and contracts, I don't think this team is anywhere close to that.
Success to me now looks more like setting a new direction and finding the next Tkachuk/Gaudreau in a Flames uniform.

I don't think the current team can have the same goalposts I had for the team 2 years ago and success now would be seeing an upcoming superstar (or 2) in the next 2-3 years that gives real hope for becoming a contender again.

[traptor]

Consistency.
Using 3 or 5 year windows I think the team needs to average near the top (25%?) in a few different categories across these years.

Categories include:
-Regular season standings
-playoff apperances
-Playoff series wins


I think if your averages can be near the top of the league across 3 or 5 year periods in these categories you are a successful team.


Stanley cup is the cherry on top.

edit: This is assuming your team is in a window of contention. Going through a rebuild obviously changes the goals of success