Nov 20. Friedman's 31 Thoughts: Flames not interested in selling low on Gaudreau

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by bubbsy

To be frank, I blame this GM for entire fall of this year's team result.

A team struggled since the all star break, got their ass kicked in the playoffs. I don't care that you tried but failed due to things like player NtC's, etc.

Flames were a top team at the deadline, the GM does nothing but add a #6/7 dman at the deadline.

Team gets whooped in a laughable manner, and the GM trades Neal for Lucic, and adds Talbot.

What message does that share with the roster??? It's all good enough? We don't actually intend to win anything meaningful, let's just hope for regular season success??

Treliving is kind of an idiot. It's clear he's got zero people management skills whatsoever. I get that he tried to make moves, but there's gotta be plan B's to allow for change for the sake of making change to a group that got their ass kicked.

Management basically telling the team "we're going with you, you'll do it" despite the players realizing the team ain't close to getting it done come crunch time, is equivalent to saying "meh, it's good enough, just get to the playoffs again". Not to mention having your intended trades leaked, so when they don't go thru, you are stuck with players knowing they aren't even wanted here.

The more I write it out, the more I realize that Brad Treliving is a dumb gm. Good riddance, you f'ing suck man. Go make pizza's or something, this isn't a gig for you.

Wow what a train wreck of a post.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by Brick

I am hoping for a new GM, the sooner the better.

They need to get it right with the next guy.

Right after they just extended him? Treliving ain’t going anywhere.

Treliving isn’t making Gaudreau play like garbage.

Incredible the mental gymnastics some of you will go to in order to blame anybody but the players.

[1qqaaz]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

I disagree. Canadian NHL orgs tend to be way too impatient in regards to team building. Treliving has done a lot of good things to move the Flames toward Cup contention. If it were up to me I would choose to have him see this through: It took first George MacPhee and then Brian MacLellan 20-years and six coaches to build a Cup winner. It took Doug Armstrong ten years and five. Treliving should certainly get more than five years unless he is actively impeding the team's direction, and I don't see that happening here.

I agree that it's generally smarter to keep GMs for the long term. Continuity is important.
But generally, I think GMs should be fired if the team is at the cap, and has been trading away picks, but then still misses the playoffs. MacPhee, Poile, MacLellan, Bowman were often way beneath the cap while building their teams. Those guys rarely traded picks away while the teams were poor.

Treliving has made more bad free agency signings in 5 years than MacPhee did in 20 years. Bad signings are hugely detrimental. There needs to be accountability.

Also, I am saying all of this as an alternative to trading Gaudreau/Monahan - which I doubt will happen anytime soon.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Yeah, Jack Adams coaches never get fired. IMO the evidence that Hartley is not a good coach is in the job offers he has had since leaving.

That has very little to do with my overall point.

The point was that he got rid of the previous GM’s guy (who, yes, had significant achievements on his resume) installed his coach 1, which was a failure, is now on his coach 2.

GMs usually get the opportunity to fire the old guy’s coach if warranted, but rarely the opportunity to fire their own, never mind multiple of their own

[Ashasx]

I have been less than enamored with Treliving lately, but I still think he's miles ahead of any GM this team has had in decades.

I'd rather we keep a Treliving that hopefully learns from these mistakes than hire somebody like Nieuwendyk and go through it all over again.

[danny darko]

Originally Posted by bubbsy

To be frank, I blame this GM for entire fall of this year's team result.

A team struggled since the all star break, got their ass kicked in the playoffs. I don't care that you tried but failed due to things like player NtC's, etc.

Flames were a top team at the deadline, the GM does nothing but add a #6/7 dman at the deadline.

Team gets whooped in a laughable manner, and the GM trades Neal for Lucic, and adds Talbot.

What message does that share with the roster??? It's all good enough? We don't actually intend to win anything meaningful, let's just hope for regular season success??

Treliving is kind of an idiot. It's clear he's got zero people management skills whatsoever. I get that he tried to make moves, but there's gotta be plan B's to allow for change for the sake of making change to a group that got their ass kicked.

Management basically telling the team "we're going with you, you'll do it" despite the players realizing the team ain't close to getting it done come crunch time, is equivalent to saying "meh, it's good enough, just get to the playoffs again". Not to mention having your intended trades leaked, so when they don't go thru, you are stuck with players knowing they aren't even wanted here.

The more I write it out, the more I realize that Brad Treliving is a dumb gm. Good riddance, you f'ing suck man. Go make pizza's or something, this isn't a gig for you.

I can completely understand the frustration. With that said, I think the message that Tre was likely hoping to send to this team was that he believes in the group of players that we have. After seeing what they accomplished in the regular season last year, he wanted to give them a shot at redemption. I don't think that giving a roster that finished second overall an opportunity to improve on that means that he is settling for mediocrity. Now with the rumors swirling that he is looking to shake things up, it leads me to believe that he's saying "time's up". In my opinion, what he does with the rest of this season will be a more important body of work to judge than him not blowing up a team that finished at the top of the west.

[FanIn80]

Treliving is two failed-deals away from this being a much better team. It’s not like he hasn’t tried to make the changes. Not to mention losing Brodie, Hamonic and Valimaki to injuries... that’s literally half of our entire starting D.

The guy knows what needs to be done. I’d be concerned if he had shown no signs of wanting to do something, but that just isn’t the case.

[Rando]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Treliving is two failed-deals away from this being a much better team. It’s not like he hasn’t tried to make the changes. Not to mention losing Brodie, Hamonic and Valimaki to injuries... that’s literally half of our entire starting

Brodie and Hamonic have only been lost in the last week, and close doesn't count.

[Brick]

Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher

Right after they just extended him? Treliving ain’t going anywhere.

Treliving isn’t making Gaudreau play like garbage.

Incredible the mental gymnastics some of you will go to in order to blame anybody but the players.

This team isn't going anywhere. Roster construction falls on the GM.

It's amazing that this is so difficult for some to understand.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by Brick

This team isn't going anywhere. Roster construction falls on the GM.

It's amazing that this is so difficult for some to understand.

The roster construction under this GM has been great imo. The team is more asset rich than any time I’ve followed it in the past 25 years. We have a tremendous core of great young players. Treliving has done a good job and was rightfully extended. That’s reality.

What’s wrong this season lies more on the back of Gaudreau than anything.

Blaming Treliving, blaming Jankowski is just failing to recognize the real problem. It is amazing that this is so difficult for some to understand.

[Vinny01]

Originally Posted by Brick

This team isn't going anywhere. Roster construction falls on the GM.

It's amazing that this is so difficult for some to understand.

You realize that we are located in a bottom 5 market in the NHL right?

Guiding a team to 2nd overall within 5 years of taking over for a scorched earth rebuild shouldn’t result in a firing 25 games into the next season. Give your head a shake.

Posters complain that we can’t sign Tavares, or Panarin must be living in a bubble and not realize that Calgary is far from desirable for most players. We live in a small market but it is still a fishbowl for the players. Bad weather, a ton of travel, and the worst building in the league.

It is laughable to punt the architect who gave the fans their best season in 30 years after a poor start to the next year where they are still very much in the mix to make the playoffs.

Any fan with half a brain could see this team was going to struggle to make a ton of moves this summer due to their best player needing a new contract and it is unlikely they were going to move a core piece after the season they had.

[Roof-Daddy]

Basically the same team as last year that had 107 points, minus two of it's worst players (Neal and Smith) plus he made a deal to add a top 6 center in the off season that fell through because the player wouldn't waive his NTC for Calgary. He also added a top 6 winger at the deadline (Zucker) for what is basically dead weight now (Frolik) but somehow that didn't go through.

The players are not performing this year, and that's on them not Treliving.

[ComixZone]

Originally Posted by Roof-Daddy

Basically the same team as last year that had 107 points, minus two of it's worst players (Neal and Smith) plus he made a deal to add a top 6 center in the off season that fell through because the player wouldn't waive his NTC for Calgary. He also added a top 6 winger at the deadline (Zucker) for what is basically dead weight now (Frolik) but somehow that didn't go through.

The players are not performing this year, and that's on them not Treliving.

There wasn’t a lot to go on to believe that last year was a sustainable level of success for this team. They had a number of players nail career highs, only to seemingly burn out towards the end of the year and then get destroyed din the playoffs.

Treliving’s attempted deals this summer/last trade deadline shows he knows the roster has two glaring holes. Unfortunately, despite his attempts, he hasn’t been able to address those holes. It’s good to know he doesn’t have his head buried in the sand, but at the same time he doesn’t get credit for trying. It’s not like the team isn’t trying to play good hockey. There’s a difference between effort and execution.

Yeah, the performance of a number of players ought to be better, but that still doesn’t erase the significant holes in the roster. We saw Colorado have a very similar “blip” of a season a few years back. As they then bottomed back out, they continued to build the team showing a good level of patience and solid drafting. The team needs to go through that phase still. They still have too many important spots unfilled, and they have a depleted prospect pool.

Tree has done a good job building the team up to its current level, but that level is that of a bubble team. His work isn’t done. As others have pointed out, Calgary isn’t a big UFA destination, making the draft all the more important to building a top tier team.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

Sure and people have done it in shorter time too.

Right, but how much of a regular occurrence is this? Is this something that has happened with frequency?

IMO the standard for the GM should be more than not "actively impeding the team's direction".

Agreed. I think planning and vision are crucial criteria, but these are almost impossible to judge from the outside looking in. My point was a lot more nuanced than merely stated: the GM should get more than just five years to see his vision through.

I find it hard to evaluate a GM because we don't really hear their true vision or strategic direction and we really have no idea what their go forward plan is. From the outside in, appears Treliving has gone all in on this team's core to this point. Thus far, it worked for a 60 game stretch in the last regular season.

Given the lack of clarity from the outside it is impossible to say whether Treliving has gone "all in" on this core. It looked like he was "all in" on a core that included at one time Dougie Hamilton and Micheal Ferland, and he pretty quickly moved to upgrade those pieces.

[Vinny01]

I will say this about last summer as well. When this team struggled to score goals in 2018 it was clear in my mind they needed to add at least one top 6 forward. When the Hurricanes trade went down I saw Lindholm as an upgrade on Ferland but that trade subtracted one top 6 player for another. When they signed Neal it did seem like a perfect fit for me and that was the second top 6 forward required.

I was very pleased with the offense but was surprised how little Neal contributed. The way it is going this year it does really look like this team is missing that additional top 6 forward required the previous summer

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Rando

Brodie and Hamonic have only been lost in the last week, and close doesn't count.

According to whom?

Flames ownership ultimately determines what counts, and what doesn't. For all we know they continue to support what Treliving has been actively working towards, and they still believe he is the right man to see it through.

[Brick]

This team is not built properly.

Goaltending has never been a priority.

The roster is built around a small left wing player, who should have only been a complimentary piece.

They are weak down the middle of the ice. They have a checker as their 2nd line center. They have to cheat to generate offence.

They are too slow, too small, too soft, and they lack leadership, except for Tkachuk, who will only get better with age.

Trade Gaudreau and others for picks.

What this team needs most is probably only available through the draft.

[Harry Lime]

If Peters saw what the rest of the universe did in the last game, Mangiapane-Monahan-Tkachuk is the line that actually functions at a high level. If he gives them top line assignments, and let's Gaudreau and Lindholm rebuild confidence on the second line, the rest of the team can plug and play into something that works. (like the 3rd line)

Getting out of this funk is on Peters putting players in positions to succeed.

If Gaudreau-Monahan-Lindholm is back at the start of next game, I'm going to give up the year and start streaming the KHL for my hockey fix. I'll become a fan of the Thorg-Groomblestok Thunder, or something.

[VladtheImpaler]

I think there is no chance Treliving will be fired (given the extension), and I don't think he should be. He is definitely better than most NHL GM's when you look at the overall picture. As an aside, I think most NHL GM's are not very bright, but that is a separate issue.
Treliving certainly put himself into a pickle going into this season, in no small part due to the money he wasted that left him no cap to make moves. On the one hand he is trying to say "This team is really good. I have full confidence in you", but on the other he tried to make some major moves that fell through, so clearly he was only "somewhat" confident. As I jokingly posted in another thread, this really looks like Tottenham in the EPL this year. A good team that did well last year, but faded down the stretch. Tried to move some players out, but failed, so came into the season with a number of players that either wanted out or are not wanted, which doubtless is not great for morale/cohension/"the room". Stumbling and bumbling out of the gate. I think the parallel to Tottenham is uncanny.
Plus, something happened last February involving Monahan and Gaudreau, and it does not seem resolved.

[Roof-Daddy]

Originally Posted by Brick

This team is not built properly.

Goaltending has never been a priority.

The roster is built around a small left wing player, who should have only been a complimentary piece.

They are weak down the middle of the ice. They have a checker as their 2nd line center. They have to cheat to generate offence.

They are too slow, too small, too soft, and they lack leadership.

My goodness.

80+ point wingers are not "complimentary pieces"

With all those problems it's amazing they managed 50 wins last year.

I agree though that they are weak down the middle, and so does Treliving, which is why he tried to acquire Kadri I guess. Too bad the little #### wouldn't waive his NTC.

That's been magnified by having Backlund's offensive game fall off a cliff this season. Not mention instead of Jankowski taking a step forward he seems to have taken about 20 steps backwards. Possibly butt hurt because he knows he was traded this past off season.

My biggest beef with Treliving is that he didn't go out and acquire ROR when he was made available. That was a huge miss. A key, cost controlled core piece that would have fit like a round peg in a gaping round hole this roster happens to have. It also would have come with the added bonus of no James Neal signing.

ROR = no James Neal = no Milan Lucic