2023/2024 Trade Rumors and Speculation Thread

[Goriders]

Originally Posted by butterfly

That's an argument? There is no way to build a guaranteed playoff team, otherwise everybody would be doing it.

Flames have had one top-5 pick ever, I think? Could be wrong. Sometimes they find stars like Fleury and Gaudreau when other teams get scared off by their size.

Hope they get a bunch of 1st rounders the next few years.

If you look at the draft over the years the stars show up all over the first round. You look at a few of the teams that took the scorched earth plan and they are worse off than the Flames.

With a salary cap you need a combo of good trades, good scouting/drafting, good player development and some free agent pick ups.

[bluejays]

The player development seems to be among the worst over the past ten years. Maybe it’s just my perception but some nicely touted prospects fizzled out. It would be fine if the occasional one did but they really didn’t have a prospect come in and take the league by storm. A lot of teams with the right supporting cast seemed to bring in prospects to good situations and they’ve thrived but I find it’s hasn’t been good here. I trust their drafting but their player development, isn’t good.

[Bonded]

Originally Posted by bluejays

The player development seems to be among the worst over the past ten years. Maybe it’s just my perception but some nicely touted prospects fizzled out. It would be fine if the occasional one did but they really didn’t have a prospect come in and take the league by storm. A lot of teams with the right supporting cast seemed to bring in prospects to good situations and they’ve thrived but I find it’s hasn’t been good here. I trust their drafting but their player development, isn’t good.

Disagree, who is on the list of nicely touted prospects that fizzled out that you think could have taken the league by storm?
I think their player development has mostly been fine.

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

Originally Posted by bluejays

The player development seems to be among the worst over the past ten years. Maybe it’s just my perception but some nicely touted prospects fizzled out. It would be fine if the occasional one did but they really didn’t have a prospect come in and take the league by storm. A lot of teams with the right supporting cast seemed to bring in prospects to good situations and they’ve thrived but I find it’s hasn’t been good here. I trust their drafting but their player development, isn’t good.

I think what has hurt this club the most was the ‘drafting’ around the 2004ish sutter years.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by Flames Fan, Ph.D.

I think what has hurt this club the most was the ‘drafting’ around the 2004ish sutter years.

These things are trickle down effects and while I agree that sutter weirdly drafted third liner potentials in the first rounds, those players would have long been cycled through. Not sure it would have affected us that much through the years to today.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

High of 4th, low of 27th. That's not at all the same thing as drafting around 15th every single year, and you know it perfectly well.

Fine. Take the median position then. Not far off. The draft position proves just how pathetically average this organization has been over the years. Not good enough to win a cup and not bad enough to draft first. Mediocre is what this club is. That needs to change.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by Bonded

Disagree, who is on the list of nicely touted prospects that fizzled out that you think could have taken the league by storm?
I think their player development has mostly been fine.

Bennett was the biggest. Monahan too. Poirier and Klimchuk were well touted and fell flat. Dube of course hadn't developed as hoped. The first two being guys who were drafted high but didn’t live up to expectations.

[Monahammer]

Monahan turned out, produced as a number 1 centre for us for several seasons, was generally a top playoff performer, and led his draft class in goals for a not insignificant period even over mack. It appears he can play at about 50-60 point pace after his former injuries and might even have a 30g season in him still in the right setting. That's a pretty great 6oa if you ask me.

Bennett. Let us not speak of this.

[Monahammer]

I always hate the "made the playoffs x times argument". I hate it most because I got confronted with a perfect rebuttal in edmonton a few years back that hurt me fierce:
Yes, but even though edmonton only made the playoffs once in that stretch, they have more wins in the playoffs than the flames.

Only the owners really care about making the playoffs to get smacked in r 1. And the one time we've made it past in the last decade we got smacked by our rivals.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

Monahan turned out, produced as a number 1 centre for us for several seasons, was generally a top playoff performer, and led his draft class in goals for a not insignificant period even over mack. It appears he can play at about 50-60 point pace after his former injuries and might even have a 30g season in him still in the right setting. That's a pretty great 6oa if you ask me.

Bennett. Let us not speak of this.

Fair. Monahan came in at a time when the league was speeding up and IMO didn't live up to skating expectations more than anything. It was always contested if Gaudreau made him or he made Gaudreau. So I guess not terrible but I don't think he was ever a guy to put the team on his back. Injuries ultimately derailed him. Small details aside the team has done well at drafting and ultimately keeping 2nd and 3rd liners on the team, but creating a star? Developing scorers? I'm just not sure. I wouldn't call the Leafs model's for much but in recent years Dubas was good at developing guys, and trading them or cutting them loose when they've asked for too much. There's been a pretty good stable of players they've brought in and performed very well. Or used in deals as they were well regarded ceiling wise. The team hasn't brought in a stable of good prospects who push for top ranks or star status and that's a concern to me.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by mikephoen

Edwards has a net worth of $2.7 billion. Allan Markin is worth $2.2 billion. I'm sure the other owners have a few dollars also. Even if they never made another dollar between the two of them and played to an empty building for the next 50 years, they would still have tens of millions left in the bank.

Here we see another person who thinks ‘billionaire’ means ‘a guy with a billion dollars in cash burning a hole in his pants’. Most of these guys' net worth is held in the form of stock in their companies, which they cannot simply up and sell. First they have to obey the various securities regulations, which, for insiders, means publicly declaring their intention to sell. You know what happens to companies whose CEOs or major stockholders publicly declare that they are selling off their stock? It isn't pretty. If the owners decided to cash out of their businesses, they wouldn't get anywhere near 100 cents on the dollar.

Originally Posted by 1qqaaz

The team has been mediocre for about 30 years - circa 1994.
Murray Edwards first joined the Flames ownership group in...1994.

Murray Edwards hasn't been running the team since 1994. For many years after that, the governor and dominant owner was Harley Hotchkiss.

That's leaving aside the fact that it's ridiculous to draw a line at 1994 and claim the team has been the same ever since. You're including the following very distinct eras:

• Losing the '89 championship team due to bad trades and skyrocketing salaries (1990–96)
• The ‘Young Guns’ era, when the team was hopelessly uncompetitive for obvious financial reasons (1996–2003)
• The Sutter era, in which the team was competitive and often exciting, and came within a disputed goal of winning the Stanley Cup (2003–09)
• The aftermath of the Sutter era, in which that team slowly fell apart as its assets declined in value (2009–12)
• The Feaster/Burke/Treliving rebuild, ending with the surprise playoff appearance (2012–15)
• In and out of the playoffs with the Gaudreau–Monahan–Giordano core (2015–18)
• Two first-place finishes alternating with mediocre years (2018–22)
• Failed attempt to retool after Gaudreau and Tkachuk left town (2022–present)

To say the team has been getting the same results for the last 30 years is lazy overgeneralization and blatant revisionism.

[Bonded]

Originally Posted by bluejays

Bennett was the biggest. Monahan too. Poirier and Klimchuk were well touted and fell flat. Dube of course hadn't developed as hoped. The first two being guys who were drafted high but didn’t live up to expectations.

Monahan was just fine before getting derailed by injuries and still has had a good career for a 6th overall.
Bennett wasn’t going to be a #1C no matter the development.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Fine. Take the median position then. Not far off..

That's also wrong. The point is that the standard deviation is high. Sometimes the team has been very good, sometimes very bad, often in the middle. To say it has been in the middle continuously is a lie.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

Professor takes 22 random-ish data points between 1 and 30/32, averages them, and discovers the average is 15!

Okay, let's do the Bruins. Draft position by season finish since the start of the century. 13th, 29th, 16th, 27th, 5th, 8th, 16th, 29th, 17th, 24th, 24th, 26th, 30th, 14th, 15th, 18th, 28th, 29th, 31st, 22nd, 23rd, 32nd.

Look at that. 22 random-ish data points (season finish is random now?) between 1 and 30/32, averages them, and discovers the average is 22nd (21.636)! How could 15 not be the answer??? Because the Bruins aren't average and don't try to be average?

[boogerz]

The only player out of the five in BlueJays post that simply wasn't good enough to make it was Klimchuk.

Bennett has been salvaged into a second line center.
Monahan is still a top6 centerman when he's healthy
Dube is on the same path as Bennett and has time to turn things around (notwithstanding the outcome of current events)
Poirier was trending well until injuries and alcoholism derailed his career


You can argue that the Flames screwed up all of those players. They kept bouncing around Bennett and constantly switching his position from his natural C. They've giving Dube the same treatment as Bennett. They didn't shut down Monahan early enough when his injuries started appearing. Could they have kept a closer eye on Poirier to get him earlier intervention when his partying started to get out of hand (apparently 2014-ish according to him) and help keep him on track?

Between 2011-17, the Flames were reliably pulling 2-3 NHL players out of the draft. It's still early, but that trend looks like it will continue for 2018-2020.

Judging by how many of the Flames' picks from the past decade are still in the NHL or playing top-tier pro hockey, the Flames are good at drafting and terrible at prospect development.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by boogerz

The only player out of the five in BlueJays post that simply wasn't good enough to make it was Klimchuk.

Bennett has been salvaged into a second line center.
Monahan is still a top6 centerman when he's healthy
Dube is on the same path as Bennett and has time to turn things around (notwithstanding the outcome of current events)
Poirier was trending well until injuries and alcoholism derailed his career


You can argue that the Flames screwed up all of those players. They kept bouncing around Bennett and constantly switching his position from his natural C. They've giving Dube the same treatment as Bennett. They didn't shut down Monahan early enough when his injuries started appearing. Could they have kept a closer eye on Poirier to get him earlier intervention when his partying started to get out of hand (apparently 2014-ish according to him) and help keep him on track?

Between 2011-17, the Flames were reliably pulling 2-3 NHL players out of the draft. It's still early, but that trend looks like it will continue for 2018-2020.

Judging by how many of the Flames' picks from the past decade are still in the NHL or playing top-tier pro hockey, the Flames are good at drafting and terrible at prospect development.

That's the problem. They brought them in but they didn't reach their potential largely. I'll take my comment about Monahan back because the game was changing around him when he came into his own, along with injuries messing things up. But they truly haven't hit a first line home run in a long time. Again, their drafting has been very very good with what they've had, but you look at the Bruins, Avs, and some of those upper teams and they've developed some really good first liners to reach their full potential.

[Hackey]

Originally Posted by Goriders

If you look at the draft over the years the stars show up all over the first round. You look at a few of the teams that took the scorched earth plan and they are worse off than the Flames.

With a salary cap you need a combo of good trades, good scouting/drafting, good player development and some free agent pick ups.

You just outlined the baseline that every team in the league is doing. Top picks don't guarantee anything but they 100% are the most probable of all strategies to acquire elite players by a long shot. To not use the most probable method as one of your methods would be absolutely foolish.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by bluejays

Bennett was the biggest. Monahan too. Poirier and Klimchuk were well touted and fell flat. Dube of course hadn't developed as hoped. The first two being guys who were drafted high but didn’t live up to expectations.

Poirier and Klimchuk were no more touted than any other late first

[Sylvanfan]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

I am sure the Flames would probably love to move Markstrom at the deadline but unless something has changed Markstrom doesn't want to move this year and has a NMC. Maybe once Lindholm is out he changes his mind, maybe he decides to pursue a winning team but everything I have heard is that Markstrom doesn't want to move this year. Maybe it is a family thing, maybe a team thing, could be a location thing, I don't know. Maybe he is open to moving in the offseason instead.

Recently married with a young child, he probably doesn't want to pick up and move while they stay behind. Much easier on players to be moved in the offseason. Much easier to move the whole family at that time.

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by Sylvanfan

Recently married with a young child, he probably doesn't want to pick up and move while they stay behind. Much easier on players to be moved in the offseason. Much easier to move the whole family at that time.

Agreed