The Athletic: LeBrun: Flames in a tough spot

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

I understand differing views on Treliving but I can’t agree with suggesting the team’s current state is based on a lack of assets when he started six years ago. He had a young team, young star talent, excess draft picks, swimming in cap space and zero initial expectations allowing him to trade players for picks.

IMO he was set up better than any Flame GM in history.

To me, this is the most underdiscussed aspect of why the flames are where they are at.

Someone referenced earlier that the Elliot trade was ok because the Flames needed a #1 goalie.

I feel like, wait a second, why exactly did they need a #1 goalie? They just stunk out the joint the year before. Bennett was only 19. They still had hot garbage like Wideman and Raymond and Bollig on the roster the year before. They had 2 defenders in their top 5 in scoring.

Why did they 'need' to add Lazar and Stone at the deadline? This was early in the rebuild?

That's what is so damning to me. It's not just missing on trading away picks, it's trading away picks in the first place when your team has no business trying to compete.

If you have an asset deficit 6 years into your tenure as General Manager, it's because you created one.

[Vinny01]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

To me, this is the most underdiscussed aspect of why the flames are where they are at.

Someone referenced earlier that the Elliot trade was ok because the Flames needed a #1 goalie.

I feel like, wait a second, why exactly did they need a #1 goalie? They just stunk out the joint the year before. Bennett was only 19. They still had hot garbage like Wideman and Raymond and Bollig on the roster the year before. They had 2 defenders in their top 5 in scoring.

Why did they 'need' to add Lazar and Stone at the deadline? This was early in the rebuild?

That's what is so damning to me. It's not just missing on trading away picks, it's trading away picks in the first place when your team has no business trying to compete.

If you have an asset deficit 6 years into your tenure as General Manager, it's because you created one.

They just paid their top 2 young players big money and failed to go max term with Gaudreau so the clock was ticking. Had these players still been on ELC that would be one thing but they earned their raises. Johnny was just 7th in scoring as a sophomore and Monahan had his second straight 60+pt season at 21.
They just drafted elite prospect in NHL ready Matthew Tkachuk.

This team is also looking at 4 playoff appearances in 6 years. So you are arguing in hindsight they should have taken the Jets approach to shuffle the chairs on the deck and do nothing but draft and develop. In 9 years since moving to Winnipeg they have 3 playoff appearances and did win 2 rounds once but look nowhere near cup contenders today and traded their last 2 1st rounders for guys that bailed after the season

[Joborule]

And ultimately at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is winning. Treliving in his six years thus far has not done much of it. 6 playoff wins in total in 3 playoff appearances is not good. We wouldn't be talking about other teams GMs with similar record with high appraise.

Until the team finally gets consistent playoff success (making it past first round multiple times), I don't think Brad Treliving can be considered a good GM based on that alone. He's mediocre to average since that's what the team results have been during his time.

[curves2000]

I like Tre, he's a good guy and a decent GM but I do think certain qualities people talk about get a little overblown. This notion and the general news around the team is that "Tre is always on the phone!! He's always trying to make this club better. He's in on every trade! The annual draft day hiest!"

In the money management business, Tre is a very very active manager who's delivering average (market) or below market returns.

If we take out some serious key pieces that were put in place by previous management teams like Gio, Brodie, Backlund, Monahan, Johnny and Janko, we aren't really left with earth shattering stuff. Sure we have good players like Chucky, Lindholm and Anderson but not much else.

We have gone through a LOT of goalies, how many coaches, how many PTO's, how many buyout's, how many UFA signing busts, how many 6/7 D guys and how many picks traded for them?

We even had Burke as some "Elite Hockey Executive" as a mentor to Tre to avoid a ton of mistakes and where are we come 6 years later?? In a very tight dog fight for making the playoffs and not really scaring anybody come playoff time if we make it.

We will see what happens but I expected more from this club.

[Vinny01]

Originally Posted by Joborule

And ultimately at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is winning. Treliving in his six years thus far has not done much of it. 6 playoff wins in total in 3 playoff appearances is not good. We wouldn't be talking about other teams GMs with similar record with high appraise.

Until the team finally gets consistent playoff success (making it past first round multiple times), I don't think Brad Treliving can be considered a good GM based on that alone. He's mediocre to average since that's what the team results have been during his time.

So anything less than the 75th percentile is mediocre?

Only 1/4 of the league gets to the second round of the playoffs. Now you need to do it multiple times at the start of a rebuild or you are just mediocre? Where is the realism in this take?


I think a big step for Brad is getting his team in the playoffs in consecutive years. This two steps forward one step back routine this team has done under him is very irritating as a fan

[Vinny01]

Originally Posted by curves2000

.

If we take out some serious key pieces that were put in place by previous management teams like Gio, Brodie, Backlund, Monahan, Johnny and Janko, we aren't really left with earth shattering stuff. Sure we have good players like Chucky, Lindholm and Anderson but not much else.
.

I find it amusing that you include a name like Janko is his inherited list and gloss over Hanifin, Hamonic, Valimaki, Mangipane, Ryan, Dube etc

[powderjunkie]

^rittich

[bubbsy]

Darryl sutter started from worse and got the flames to the cup finals, and 5 straight years of playoffs.

Both were flawed, but let's cool the breaks on appointing treliving anything above mediocre.

He will just be another gm that came and will go, without rendering any noteworthy legacy of the franchise.

Canadian team GMs absolutely have a major issue with the lack of patience. Probably the reason they haven't won a cup in decades, and why no te even looks close to contending for one.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Vinny01

So the team had a top 10 record over the last 4 months. They are 2pts out of home ice through the first 2 rounds and they are going to sell off and tank for a couple of second round picks and prospects that maybe get a cup of coffee in the league?

I am not sure how many of the STH base would think that is acceptable? There definitely are some that would be okay with that. If this season was out of reach completely it would be another story but considering they are this close I would be furious and feel my money was wasted. That coupled with how impossible it is the resell tickets I think they would be risking a fair number of cancellations.


If the season ends poorly they can still say the things you are stating and make huge organizational changes over the summer

Well hopefully they play well for the rest of the season because that top 10 record was helped by a real easy schedule over that period of time. They played 17 games against teams who have won more games than they lost and 20 games against teams who have lost more games than they have won.

For the rest of the season they play 14 games against teams above .500 and 7 games against teams below .500.

Of those 14 games against teams above .500. - two are against the best team in the NHL. Two are against the second best team in the NHL. Two are against the 9th best team in the NHL. 20 percent of their remaining games are against two teams that win a combined 64 percent of their games.

Even their ####ty teams are decent half the time including Nashville, Arizona, and Columbus. Of their remaining 21 games they have 4 easy games (detroit, New Jersey, Anaheim and San Jose). The other 17 are pretty tough matchups.

[Cleveland Steam Whistle]

Originally Posted by bubbsy

Darryl sutter started from worse and got the flames to the cup finals, and 5 straight years of playoffs.

Both were flawed, but let's cool the breaks on appointing treliving anything above mediocre.

He will just be another gm that came and will go, without rendering any noteworthy legacy of the franchise.

Canadian team GMs absolutely have a major issue with the lack of patience. Probably the reason they haven't won a cup in decades, and why no te even looks close to contending for one.

So much has changed in the NHL since the Sutter days they are hard to compare. That said, I actually think BT has proven he was a very good rebuild GM. I think he started with one of the worse situations in the league and managed to get from nothing to our “window” in 5 years (with two bonus playoff appearances and one round win as well). I think he accelerated that process with some pretty gutsy and slick trades, being the two Hamilton trades.

What we need to hold our horses on is now evaluating how he does GMing a team to go from good to contender. Very different GM skill set. And to me BT has yet to prove his skills for this stage of GMing, although I also feel most on here are simply expecting results too quickly and we need to give him more than 1 and a half seasons (of which one we had the second best regular season in franchise history and the other the team still occupies a playoff spot) before we call him a failure.

Also to the Canadian point, I also think it would be unfair not to recognize that the job of a Canadian team GM, specifically a Western Canadian small market GM is much harder in the good to great stage of team development. Intense media focus, bad weather, lots of travel and high taxes makes the teams unpopular for free agents (which means missing out or overpayment) and lots of good players with your teams on their NTC list. Once the building from within is done, much harder to improve the roster and make those last key moves on a western Canadian team for a variety of reasons.

[RedHawk12]

It's tough to preach patience on the GM in a Canadian market that demands immediate results. Don't know if you guys remember but Cheveldayoff was absolutely chastised 3 or 4 years ago for not being active and taking the "patient" approach.

On top of that, taking a patient approach does not necessarily lead to great results. Again see Chevaldayoff and the Jets.

We're using the benefit of hindsight to say we should have kept all of those picks used on Elliott, Smith, Hamonic...at that time we were only a few years removed from having drafted Mason McDonald and Hunter Smith in the second round. Fine, Elliott didn't really work out and neither did Hamonic to an extent, but you take the chances with established NHLers over magic beans any day of the week. Especially when you have 4 budding superstars (at the time, including Bennett) and a solid D corps with Gio, Brodie and Hamilton.

[Vinny01]

Originally Posted by bubbsy

Darryl sutter started from worse and got the flames to the cup finals, and 5 straight years of playoffs.

Both were flawed, but let's cool the breaks on appointing treliving anything above mediocre.

He will just be another gm that came and will go, without rendering any noteworthy legacy of the franchise.

Canadian team GMs absolutely have a major issue with the lack of patience. Probably the reason they haven't won a cup in decades, and why no te even looks close to contending for one.

I agree with this but it remains to be seen what happens to this franchise over the next few years. I don’t like the notion of writing off this entire core and I don’t think Treliving will be fired this summer.

Personally I thought Sutter was a genius GM until he wasn’t. Brad hasn’t got there for me but the clock is ticking and I am his next moves are solid or I will probably join the new GM club.

[Burning Beard]

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

Well hopefully they play well for the rest of the season because that top 10 record was helped by a real easy schedule over that period of time. They played 17 games against teams who have won more games than they lost and 20 games against teams who have lost more games than they have won.

For the rest of the season they play 14 games against teams above .500 and 7 games against teams below .500.

Of those 14 games against teams above .500. - two are against the best team in the NHL. Two are against the second best team in the NHL. Two are against the 9th best team in the NHL. 20 percent of their remaining games are against two teams that win a combined 64 percent of their games.

Even their ####ty teams are decent half the time including Nashville, Arizona, and Columbus. Of their remaining 21 games they have 4 easy games (detroit, New Jersey, Anaheim and San Jose). The other 17 are pretty tough matchups.

Well then it's a good thing they always play like #### against the ####ty teams it seems here lately. Chicago, LA and that one San Jose game. They always seem to show up against the better teams. That's what has been frustrating lately.

[curves2000]

Originally Posted by Vinny01

I find it amusing that you include a name like Janko is his inherited list and gloss over Hanifin, Hamonic, Valimaki, Mangipane, Ryan, Dube etc

You are correct with the above mentioned names, like I said in my post we have some players but we are not bursting at the seems with talent. Let's throw Oliver in the list too. We don't have some log jam of studs on the big club and on the farm that the Flames are some powerhouse for years to come.

My thoughts: Hanifin is a good player, had a great year last year, this year not so much. He is young with some good upside, replaced Hamilton who was a good D and he came with Lindholm.

Hamonic: A great Prairie boy who plays the hard hard minutes and brings a lot of emotion and grit. He was a valued D on a good contract but given we probably will lose him in the off-season, I still think it was a LOT to pay for what amounts to 1 really good season (last) and than some.

Vali, Eat Bread and Dube: Good young players with lots of upside, no complaints here at all.

Like I said we are fielding a decent team here, let's continue to make the playoffs year in and year out and actually do some damage.

I was born in 84 and I can't really recall a sustained level of NHL leading performance for any length of time.

If we compare us to the laughable Oilers, how much more success have we really had since won the Cup??

Tre: Decent GM like I said but I don't think 6 years in he's an upper echelon manager given we are a cap team and don't have financial constraints such as scouting, medical personnel, buyouts etc.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

I understand differing views on Treliving but I can’t agree with suggesting the team’s current state is based on a lack of assets when he started six years ago. He had a young team, young star talent, excess draft picks, swimming in cap space and zero initial expectations allowing him to trade players for picks.

IMO he was set up better than any Flame GM in history.

Let's take a look at the state of the franchise when he took over in the spring of 2014.
The roster consisted of
- leading scorer Jiri Hudler (54 points - one of the lowest top scorers in the league)
- the second leading scorer was Giordano with 47 points
- The top goal scorer was Mike Cammalleri (26 goals) who was now a free agent
- Other key forwards were Mikael Backlund, Sean Monahan, Matt Stajan, Joe Colborne and Curtis Glencross. You also had the likes of Stempniak, Byron, Jones, and Galiardi. Of the entire forward group on Backlund and Monahan were "pre-apex" though Hudler would go on to have an unreal year
- The D consisted of Gio, Brodie, Russell, Wideman, and Chris Butler
- There was no #1 goalie (Ramo, Ortio, MacDonald, Berra)

So let's agree the big league roster wasn't good.

This is the top 10 prospects in the organization as of spring 2014, according to The Hockey Writers.
1. Johnny
2. Emile Poirier
3. Sven
4. Markus Granlund
5. Bill Arnold
6. Morgan Klimchuk
7. Corban Knight
8. Kenny Agostino
9. John Gillies
10. Joni Ortio

Of the group only one turned into a star, and two more turned into below average NHLers (Sven and Granlund). The rest - nothing there.

So you had a crappy NHL team and a crappy prospect base, except Johnny.
Tree also had a top 5 pick in that draft - used for Sam which everyone thought was the right move. He had two 2nds wasted on Mason Macdonald and Hunter Smith. According to most - Tree had very little, if any say in that draft.

So that's what he had to work with. Pretty poor. Largely because the previous regime got NOTHING out of the core of Iginla, Regehr, Bouwmeester, Langkow, and Kipper.

[ForeverFlameFan]

^ Treliving had to fix a lot of the unsolved problems Feaster caused.

[GioforPM]

^^ You guys forget he had Jankowski already in the pipeline. :0

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by bubbsy

Darryl sutter started from worse and got the flames to the cup finals, and 5 straight years of playoffs.

Both were flawed, but let's cool the breaks on appointing treliving anything above mediocre.

He will just be another gm that came and will go, without rendering any noteworthy legacy of the franchise.

Canadian team GMs absolutely have a major issue with the lack of patience. Probably the reason they haven't won a cup in decades, and why no te even looks close to contending for one.

Sutter was a good GM for one move only - getting Kipper. Kipper was the #1 reason why the Flames made their run, and won the division a season later. He played as well as a goalie can for those 2 years.
Sutter was an elite coach and not a good GM.
He was a terrible drafter, and made similar moves that people criticize Tree for - trading away picks for roster players. (2nd for Bourque, 3rd for Staios, etc)
He did poorly on a lot of his deals. Some get a lot of attention but others are forgotten more. But among his bad deals you have the Phaneuf trade, Jokinen to NYR, Primeau+2nd for Colin Stuart and Anton Stralman (who he then traded for a pick). Some people hate the Okotoker for Stuart deal too, but at least I get why that one was made. He had some good ones too (getting Cammy, trading for Conroy twice) but overall he was more bad than good with trades.

Darryl Sutter was not a good GM.

[FireGilbert]

I still remember Darryl on the radio after the Jokinen trade from Arizona stating it was okay the Flames gave up a first rounder because he had fully stocked up the farm system

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

Let's take a look at the state of the franchise when he took over in the spring of 2014.
The roster consisted of
- leading scorer Jiri Hudler (54 points - one of the lowest top scorers in the league)
- the second leading scorer was Giordano with 47 points
- The top goal scorer was Mike Cammalleri (26 goals) who was now a free agent
- Other key forwards were Mikael Backlund, Sean Monahan, Matt Stajan, Joe Colborne and Curtis Glencross. You also had the likes of Stempniak, Byron, Jones, and Galiardi. Of the entire forward group on Backlund and Monahan were "pre-apex" though Hudler would go on to have an unreal year
- The D consisted of Gio, Brodie, Russell, Wideman, and Chris Butler
- There was no #1 goalie (Ramo, Ortio, MacDonald, Berra)

So let's agree the big league roster wasn't good.

This is the top 10 prospects in the organization as of spring 2014, according to The Hockey Writers.
1. Johnny
2. Emile Poirier
3. Sven
4. Markus Granlund
5. Bill Arnold
6. Morgan Klimchuk
7. Corban Knight
8. Kenny Agostino
9. John Gillies
10. Joni Ortio

Of the group only one turned into a store, and two more turned into below average NHLers (Sven and Granlund). The rest - nothing there.

So you had a crappy NHL team and a crappy prospect base, except Johnny.
Tree also had a top 5 pick in that draft - used for Sam which everyone thought was the right move. He had two 2nds wasted on Mason Macdonald and Hunter Smith. According to most - Tree had very little, if any say in that draft.

So that's what he had to work with. Pretty poor. Largely because the previous regime got NOTHING out of the core of Iginla, Regehr, Bouwmeester, Langkow, and Kipper.

I read this as someone who wants to blames a guy that left the organization over nine years ago for the state of the current team. Maybe that's unfair to you, but I believe that's the subtext of what you're saying.

Treliving didn't inherit a solid big league roster and I didn't say that he did. But I think you ignored everything I listed that was good about the situation he stepped into. I stand by my belief that no Flames GM has inherited a better situation than what he did.

I want to evaluate the guy based on what he has, and just as importantly, hasn't done in the last 6 years. If you're saying he had to dig himself out of too big a hole, that's fine. We just see it quite differently.

And I see him doing nothing differently to get any value out of aging players or expiring UFA's, other than when he first took over and they were other people's players.

Is the big league roster better than six years ago? Unequivocal yes from me. Given what he started with and the assets he had to leverage, that is not enough IMO.