Craig Button: Flames have the 28th "Best" group of players under the age of 24

[Sandman]

Just fir s**ts and giggles- The annual Hockey News "Prospects Unlimited" issue came out, where they grade each team's organizational depth from top to bottom, from the pros to the prospects in Junior. They ranked the Flames Forward depth B-, Defense depth B+, and Goalie depth A-.

[madmike]

The Flames drafting is fine. The issue is they don’t pick high enough to get the impact players most teams build around.

No tanking doesn’t always work. But it often does. Mackinnon, Makar and Landeskog were all top 5 picks.

Hedman and Stamkos were both top-2 picks.

Crosby, Malkin and co. - top picks.

You can win the Cup without tanking. It’s just a lot harder. And the Flames have consistently chosen that harder path (and gone Cup-less for 32 years).

[Poe969]

Every year people on here brag about how playing for pride is more important. So they may not have bluechip prospects to build the franchise around or any cups to brag about but they have to be top 5 in pride right??

[JohnnyB]

Last year was this team's all-in chance to go for it with young stars built through the draft. It was exciting to have the chips pushed to the middle with real stars we'd cheered since they were drafted. I'm glad the Flames went for it. It was fun and worth cheering for, until the team fell short against even more talented young stars, and then our stars didn't want to be on the team anymore.