Quote:
Originally Posted by kehatch
The problem is trading or signing top players is one of the last things you do, not the first. If you trade for McTavish your getting a guy 4 years past his draft with 229 games played. His ELC is expired and he is going to get paid. Your starting your window, trading futures, and making additional high picks unlikely. So you better be ready to build a team around him.
Last time the Flames didn't start trading for these types of players until they had several high draft picks and had Gaudreau, Monahan, Bennett, and several other core players. Even then they had two false starts before drafting Tkachuk and eventually trading for Lindholm and Hanafin.
The Flames should be patient and stop trying to rush the rebuild by desperately trying to find short term fixes. Draft and develop your core, then start looking for these types of moves. Otherwise your just extending the build and condensing your window.
|
First off, the rule of thumb is just that "signing complimentary vets is the last thing you do in a rebuild". Trading for top players is something you do at any point of time if the trade becomes available and you can fill a weak position by trading from a position of depth.
Aside from that, the problem with what you are saying is that this idea is how you would rebuild a team by tearing it down to the studs and building it back up. This is not what the Flames are doing right now and not what they are going to do within this retool. (I think it is important to identify a retool as changing the roster without years of bottoming out for #1OA draft picks)
If you look at what Conroy was given as a starting point for the roster it explains why a rebuild was never in the cards (see Huberdeau, Kadri, Weegar, etc). After underperforming for 2 years, last season was supposed to be a bottom 5 finish that would have yielded one of those much-needed prospects, but that wasn't in the cards because the team overperformed after being mostly gutted and simply could not out-tank the heavy tanker teams.
I think the Flames will try to bottom out again this season by trading out Andersson and Coleman (and anyone else who asks out) but the Flames are also discovering that the next group of core players are already emerging. Wolf may prevent a high draft pick all on his own and this accelerates the retool schedule.
Also, considering the young players in the org, they are not missing a lot of pieces:
Honzek-?????-Coronato
Suniev-Zary/Reschny-Gridin
Basha-Potter/Misa-Battaglia
Stromgren-King-Klapka
Bahl-Parekh
Kuznetsov/Poirier-Brzustewicz
Solovyov-Mews
Wolf
Sergeev / Cooley / Say / Zarubin
Looking at this list is why I think it makes sense to focus on drafting and trading for high end Cs almost exclusively this year with the objective of filling that #1C spot right away. Getting a 22-24 year old with #1C potential (McTavish, Johnston, etc.) would actually be better than getting an 18 year old because of the progress of the rest of prospect pool.
We do not need said #1C to be the last piece of the puzzle and they do not need to be on their ELC if other impactful pieces are.
