Treliving needs to start feeling the heat

[Fan in Exile]

Originally Posted by dino7c

Any measurable stat would show him as a #1 dman...He is 24 years old and obviously not perfect. You just want to ignore it and claim his is bad in his own end. (despite being a possession monster and a plus player on a team with a poor differential)

You obviously just want to go with the eye test so there is no point in debating it further

He should have been on the under 23 team...worse players made it and lets not forget Chia was in charge. Hamilton has also made major steps since that tournament.

He's only 3rd on Flames defence in TOI and the only reason he's ahead of Hamonic is powerplay usage. He's never been seen or used as a #1. He needs a stable solid partner. He's a solid #2 with the right partner like Seabrook used to be.

[crdr]

Bold Prediction: The Calgary Flames win a cup in the next 3 years. This forces the hand to get a new arena and all is well.
This club is deep. For people who cannot see that are blinded by emotion.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Yes, and then you have a cost controlled Hamilton-esque player on their ELC instead of Hamilton at 5.75M. You can absolutely win a cup if you have this type of player.

Every cup winning team has players that drastically overplay their contracts, whether it's an ELC or just an huge out performance (On Calgary I'd say only Ferland and Tkachuk are those players).

Then you also have 2 additional 2nd rounders that could turn into something else.

Again, I'm not saying the trade was awful by any means - I think it's a reasonable trade, and there's still potential. However, the entire reasoning is that we get a seasoned Hamilton to "go for it" in the next few years - that's been a massive failure.

Yup.

The hamilton acquisition comes as a result of the realization the Flames had 0 prospects capable of joining the core group, and if they wanted to do anything at all with gaudreau, monahan and bennett, they needed (DESPERATELY) to acquire a ready-made defender in that same age group.

I wrote this post nearly 3 years ago:

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Completely disagree.

You want the contract done prior to the start of the season so that it doesn't hang over the club, the player and the team during the season. You need as much time as possible to get maximum return if you're going to trade him, and you can't have him holding the organization hostage during the season only to be injured when you feel like you should trade him.

Trading Giordano speeds up the rebuild, it doesn't delay it.

For Giordano, you get back at least one formidable young building block in the same age and skill range as your current core group.

Calgary is desperate right now for that, and I think if it is left unaddressed this season, you're staring down the barrel of not getting the most out of this core group.

I look at Anaheim and drool. 3 Defenders under 23 playing 20 mins per night on a cup contender.

If Calgary is going to get the most out of Monahan/Bennett/Gaudreau, they're going to need that kind of supporting cast on the backend and right now that's only Brodie with nothing coming up after him, and you can't wait 2 or 3 years for it to happen on it's own.

That's why I think Calgary was rumoured to be in on Tyler Myers. They've identified their #1 organizational need: young, top end, defenders.

The Flames traded for Hamilton just a month later, and added two more guys 27 or under in the following 2 seasons.

Rather than be a little worse in order to get a lot better, the Flames decided to hang onto Giordano and use draft picks to fill those holes. Not a tremendous strategy as things have turned out.

Most of these problems are and were entirely predictable. For some reason the Flames like to forge their own path rather than take lessons from others. Maybe that's worked great as a philosophy for the owners in their own industries, but in a zero sum game like hockey it's been a disaster.

And now the team looks like they are on the verge of being so asset poor they won't be able to supplement the core group in the years they should be winning because they wagered it all impatiently.

They can still win with this core group, but they are going to have to sell even harder in the short term to acquire enough assets to make it work. Giordano, Brodie, Stone, Backlund, etc etc, and they're going to have to be moved for young promising prospects (instead of warm bodies like freakin' lazar) and high end draft picks.

[ForeverFlameFan]

I haven't really been reading through the humongous thread, but why exactly is it Treliving's fault? Because he saw us as a playoff team, and then decided to acquire another top 4 defenseman so that we would have solid defense for this season? I find this hardly his fault. I think the only thing I would have like him to do is address the dire need of another top 6 RW, because that is our biggest weakness. Our weakness last season was defense, but once we acquired Stone we were fine. Now, it is our offense that is getting dried up.

I am looking forward to what he does this season, especially if we miss the playoffs considering how well the California teams are doing. I bet he addresses our forward depth and tries to fix it. I wouldn't be calling him out yet, he's not one of the 23 people that need to give it their all to get results. It's not his fault the offense is all dried up (with the exception of Gaudreau/Monahan/Tkachuk.

[blender]

Originally Posted by ForeverFlameFan

I haven't really been reading through the humongous thread, but why exactly is it Treliving's fault? Because he saw us as a playoff team, and then decided to acquire another top 4 defenseman so that we would have solid defense for this season? I find this hardly his fault. I think the only thing I would have like him to do is address the dire need of another top 6 RW, because that is our biggest weakness. Our weakness last season was defense, but once we acquired Stone we were fine. Now, it is our offense that is getting dried up.

I am looking forward to what he does this season, especially if we miss the playoffs considering how well the California teams are doing. I bet he addresses our forward depth and tries to fix it. I wouldn't be calling him out yet, he's not one of the 23 people that need to give it their all to get results. It's not his fault the offense is all dried up (with the exception of Gaudreau/Monahan/Tkachuk.

It is fair to call Treliving out as he built the team and has to answer for their performance. No issue there. He knows that comes with the job. The other thing that comes with the job is some patience by ownership and they will likely give it to him. He will have an opportunity to improve this off season as you suggest and the reality is that the team is not a total disaster as some people are suggesting.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

I am curious if he has any bad moves on his resume? Seems to me giving up a 2nd and two 3rds for 4 years of goaltending at the most is a bad move. I would also guess that the package for Elliott probably would have got us Jones, I suspect Brad picked Elliott over Jones, not that the Bruins found greater value in a 29th overall pick and a former 5th rounder than a potential 34th overall and a potential 75th overall.

What? This makes no sense as Elliott was traded for 1 full year after the Sharks acquired Jones. So you can't say that Brad picked Elliott over Jones when a full year separated the two moves.
From what I've been told the Flames were in on Jones and also had a deal to move Hiller to the Sharks.
When the Bruins moved Jones to SJ it both took the Flames out of that deal, and took away their landing spot for Hiller. Which then created the 3 goalie monster.

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

Hamonic bad move

Not picking up any scoring help in the offseason bad move.

Lazar, horrible move.

Trying to fill a top 6 forward spot with PTO's in back to back seasons is a different approach.

Having one of the thinnest prospect pools in hockey bad move.

Hamilton was a good move

Frolik signing was a good move.

Not sure if I am missing any good moves.

Hamonic will be fine is a part of the core moving forward. Not a great deal but not as horrible as being made of
Lazar isn't looking great but it was a 2nd. He still will be better than most 2nds.
The prospect pool isn't bad as has been highlighted elsewhere

Other good moves
- Moving Russel for a nice haul
- Moving Glencross
- Walking away from Joe Colborne's arbitration deal
- Signing Versteeg
- Patrick Sieloff for Chiasson
- Hudler deal
- Re-signing Monanah and Johnny to pretty cap friendly deals
- getting Jankowski signed coming out of college

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

The 3 players we had playing on legit teams (as any team could load up on Slovaks and have a lot of prospects)?

There are at least 20 teams that have deeper prospect pools right now than the Flames and the remaining teams will pass us in the near future since we are not really drafting this year.

According to Dobber hockey as of Sept 2017 the flames were #5
https://dobberprospects.com/2017-org...ects-rankings/

According to THW they are #8 when it comes to farm systems.
https://thehockeywriters.com/nhl-bes...-2017-ranking/

The systems haven't changed much since these rankings were done to suggest the Flames have moved from top 10 to bottom 10.

Now I will agree that moving forward the absence of picks WILL hurt the prospect pool. But the argument that they are bottom third now is flimsy at best.

[mikephoen]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

What? This makes no sense as Elliott was traded for 1 full year after the Sharks acquired Jones. So you can't say that Brad picked Elliott over Jones when a full year separated the two moves.
From what I've been told the Flames were in on Jones and also had a deal to move Hiller to the Sharks.
When the Bruins moved Jones to SJ it both took the Flames out of that deal, and took away their landing spot for Hiller. Which then created the 3 goalie monster.



Hamonic will be fine is a part of the core moving forward. Not a great deal but not as horrible as being made of
Lazar isn't looking great but it was a 2nd. He still will be better than most 2nds.
The prospect pool isn't bad as has been highlighted elsewhere

Other good moves
- Moving Russel for a nice haul
- Moving Glencross
- Walking away from Joe Colborne's arbitration deal
- Signing Versteeg
- Patrick Sieloff for Chiasson
- Hudler deal
- Re-signing Monanah and Johnny to pretty cap friendly deals
- getting Jankowski signed coming out of college

Some other moves:

Engelland signing -- good
Handling of the expansion draft -- good
Gawdin signing -- good
Foo signing -- hasn't paid off yet, but no risk, so good
Raymond signing -- bad
Bouma signing -- bad
admitting mistakes and buying out both Bouma and Raymond -- good
Jagr signing -- good, even though it didn't work out

[mikephoen]

I thought of another good thing.

Poirier may never make the NHL, but Flames management stepped in and helped him with his addition problem, which may in the long run be the most important thing that ever happens to him. And the same with Ferland before him. I'm not sure if Treliving was around for Ferland (the article I just read mentioned Hartley and Burke, but not Tre), but even if Ferland predates Brad, I still think it definitely is a good thing the way they handled Poirier. Sadly, I don't think every team's management has dealt with stuff like this very well over the years, and the Flames deserve credit for how they handled it.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

I thought of another good thing.

Poirier may never make the NHL, but Flames management stepped in and helped him with his addition problem, which may in the long run be the most important thing that ever happens to him. And the same with Ferland before him. I'm not sure if Treliving was around for Ferland (the article I just read mentioned Hartley and Burke, but not Tre), but even if Ferland predates Brad, I still think it definitely is a good thing the way they handled Poirier. Sadly, I don't think every team's management has dealt with stuff like this very well over the years, and the Flames deserve credit for how they handled it.

Most organizations probably handles stuff like that poorly until more recently. Pain killer addiction, substance abuse, alcoholism, etc was probably simply looked past. Shake it off and get on the ice!

[heep223]

Originally Posted by ForeverFlameFan

I haven't really been reading through the humongous thread, but why exactly is it Treliving's fault? Because he saw us as a playoff team, and then decided to acquire another top 4 defenseman so that we would have solid defense for this season? I find this hardly his fault. I think the only thing I would have like him to do is address the dire need of another top 6 RW, because that is our biggest weakness. Our weakness last season was defense, but once we acquired Stone we were fine. Now, it is our offense that is getting dried up.

I am looking forward to what he does this season, especially if we miss the playoffs considering how well the California teams are doing. I bet he addresses our forward depth and tries to fix it. I wouldn't be calling him out yet, he's not one of the 23 people that need to give it their all to get results. It's not his fault the offense is all dried up (with the exception of Gaudreau/Monahan/Tkachuk.

He hired a coach who doesn’t know how to win in the NHL.

[Pointman]

Fourth season. Mandate it to "win", as outlined in Burke's hiring interview. Spends to the cap. Missed playoffs. That is bad. Not average. Average team makes playoffs, even more so an average not-rebuilding team. Treliving's results are flat out bad, no matter how you slice it.

If you believe that he has made more good moves than bad ones, than you either misjudging his moves or his bad moves, though lesser in numbers, far outweigh his good ones.

Either way having a non-playoffs team after working on it for four years is failure and it doesn't matter if on the way to this fail he has made some good moves.

[blender]

Originally Posted by Pointman

Fourth season. Mandate it to "win", as outlined in Burke's hiring interview. Spends to the cap. Missed playoffs. That is bad. Not average. Average team makes playoffs, even more so an average not-rebuilding team. Treliving's results are flat out bad, no matter how you slice it.

If you believe that he has made more good moves than bad ones, than you either misjudging his moves or his bad moves, though lesser in numbers, far outweigh his good ones.

Either way having a non-playoffs team after working on it for four years is failure and it doesn't matter if on the way to this fail he has made some good moves.

Totally fair, and if ownership or Treliving himself felt anything different I'd be surprised and very outraged. I do not believe that this is the case, and I believe that ownership will give him another chance (possibly his last) to get this team where it needs to be.
Even though the results are a failure, contrary to many opinions here, the team is not a total disaster.

[Strange Brew]

I don't believe you evaluate a GM by going down the list of moves and try to pick each as good or bad. A GM should have a vision of how the team will become a contender. And then a plan for getting there. Evaluate him against these.

I find Treliving's vision for the team to be very opaque but near as I can tell, it is to create a contender while Gaudreau, Monahan and Giordano are on their current contracts. As for his execution plan, its relatively obvious. He was happy with his prospect pool, so he was using draft picks as currency to improve the roster.

And presumably he thought he hired the right coach to take them there.

Is this the right vision? Maybe but I would contend that he could have waited longer before banking on this being a championship core.

As for the execution plan, well I guess the proof is in the results.

Frankly I think he has done a substandard job unless you believe the team is better than its results indicate and are just undone by inexperience and bad luck.

As for the Hamonic and Lazar deals, those were just bad trades IMO no matter the circumstances. He overpaid twice.

[flame^thrower]

Originally Posted by crdr

Bold Prediction: The Calgary Flames win a cup in the next 3 years. This forces the hand to get a new arena and all is well.
This club is deep. For people who cannot see that are blinded by emotion.

Who do you suppose will be coaching them? I would love to see this happen obviously, but there needs to be changes before we have any hope in hell of competing for the cup, nevermind winning it. To be honest, I have no idea which changes need to be done more, player personnel or coaching/management. My gut says the latter. Probably a bit of both. Either way I hope something is done, and hope we aren't sent back into another dark era.

[crdr]

Originally Posted by flame^thrower

Who do you suppose will be coaching them? I would love to see this happen obviously, but there needs to be changes before we have any hope in hell of competing for the cup, nevermind winning it. To be honest, I have no idea which changes need to be done more, player personnel or coaching/management. My gut says the latter. Probably a bit of both. Either way I hope something is done, and hope we aren't sent back into another dark era.

Coaching and Management isn't the problem. I think Calgary is a unique team dealing with real problems that if solved will be a wrecking ball in the next couple years. Tkachuk in the playoffs?! Jeez... I really like Coach G. He gets it. He has given EVERYONE a kick at the can to experiment with youth which is the answer in today's game. Spencer Foo. I already like. His interviews are excellent.

I think it's just patience and synchronicity in a rapidly changing NHL.
People underrate how hard it is to implement a sophisticated and flexible yet robust System day in and day out. When the Defense doesn't click with talented young forwards that we do have to adapt to different teams every night. We're gonna have blatant break downs. Which have been masked by Smitty. Kulak has been a surprise. Considering we don't have a pure shooter on the team. It's hard to play the pure goal scoring game without one. But, pure goal scoring isn't the ticket. (See Washington and Tampa Bay.) Which makes the Flames so interesting in the future. We have such great young talent up and down the line up.

Short Answer: It's Systems *getting brilliant ideas onto the ice consistently* and the Team Leadership to buy into it. Monahan has to put the C on for the forwards...

[Saqe]

Originally Posted by Pointman

Fourth season. Mandate it to "win", as outlined in Burke's hiring interview. Spends to the cap. Missed playoffs. That is bad. Not average. Average team makes playoffs, even more so an average not-rebuilding team. Treliving's results are flat out bad, no matter how you slice it.

If you believe that he has made more good moves than bad ones, than you either misjudging his moves or his bad moves, though lesser in numbers, far outweigh his good ones.

Either way having a non-playoffs team after working on it for four years is failure and it doesn't matter if on the way to this fail he has made some good moves.

Good point. Listing good/bad moves doesn't really matter, at the end of the day it's the results that do. And the results have been underwhelming with Treliving.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Saqe

Good point. Listing good/bad moves doesn't really matter, at the end of the day it's the results that do. And the results have been underwhelming with Treliving.

Results matter but teams are going to have bad seasons. The Preds haven't been terrific every year but they stuck with Poile? Why...because he makes sound decisions and generally does more good than bad.

I agree you can't just make a list of good/bad and that results also matter but that's the point - it needs to be a full and thorough review.

Again I go back to one of my main points - bad teams change GMs far too regularly. If you think the guy is making rationale and sound decisions, then my inclination would be to stick with him.

[Erick Estrada]

Treliving's job is safe considering he just signed an extension. However if his contract was up at the end of this season I'm not so sure he would be back as you can make a case he's made his share of mistakes over his tenure that have hurt the team. That said I feel you simply can't fire a man that's done a good not great job unless you are positive you can replace him with a better GM and I'm of the opinion that a lot of the GM's in this league are terrible so my feeling is that he's a better than average GM by default. He does need to get the next coaching hire right because this team is now at a stage in the rebuild where they can't be spinning their wheels like the past few seasons.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

Results matter but teams are going to have bad seasons. The Preds haven't been terrific every year but they stuck with Poile? Why...because he makes sound decisions and generally does more good than bad.

I agree you can't just make a list of good/bad and that results also matter but that's the point - it needs to be a full and thorough review.

Again I go back to one of my main points - bad teams change GMs far too regularly. If you think the guy is making rationale and sound decisions, then my inclination would be to stick with him.

Would you say bad teams hire bad GM's (and therefore have to fire them) or are they firing good GM's?

The Patriots cycled through GM's and coaches until BB showed up.
The Penguins won the Cup with a brand new management team.
Haven't the Oilers had the same jokers in charge for a long time?

IMO it all comes down to whether you have a GM with an appropriate vision and strategy and then you can measure how they do against that strategy.