I think it's hard to rank the GMs when they often take marching orders from ownership.
It seems pretty apparent that the refusal to fully rebuild, make blockbuster trades, or even take a definite direction, is a byproduct of the Flames ownership. And it has been for decades.
In other words, the mediocrity is because of ownership. And Treliving has been excellent at getting mediocre results for them. It's hard to be better than mediocre when you never draft an elite center top 3 in the draft. But it's also hard to be worse than mediocre when you spend to the cap. Buffalo somehow manages to do both of these things.
I think 24th is too low. Rather, I think he should be just slightly below average. At the very least, none of Treliving's huge moves have been that bad. The worst are probably the Neal contract, the Tkachuk extension (leaves him UFA at 25), the Gulutzan hire, and the Hamonic trade. As bad as those were, they weren't abysmal (see Skinner, Bob, and Hall trade).
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