2025/2026 Season Trade Rumours and Speculation Thread

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Have any evidence of that?

Oilers got young stars, built a new arena, and then their revenue and organizational worth skyrocketed.

Flames have an opportunity to do the same thing here.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...rs-since-2006/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...es-since-2006/

Looks pretty close before McDavid to me, according to this from 06/07 to 14/15 the Flames had higher operating revenue in every season...wonder what changed after 2015

So much for that "News Flash"

The new arena is the reason for their biggest jump. The stars etc, didn't do anything if you look at it year by year. And they made more PO revenue over the last few years.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Flames' value is 19th in the NHL, and Murray Edwards owns a part of that (not all - there are several owners).

Appreciation in value is all well and good but it down't equal cash in your pocket unless you sell. It's yearly profit that equals money in your pocket and the Flames lose money as much as they make it.

I also think you are confusing the original purchase price of the Flames ($16M) in 1980 with what Murray Edwards bought in for back in 1994 (which is a complete unknown).

You're right I don't know what he paid in the 90's. Based on similar prices, we know it is a small fraction of today's value.

Owning the Flames is an incredibly lucrative business. If he has a problem with cash flow, he can sell the team. Meanwhile every time the league expands, Murray gets the equivalent of several thousand season tickets.

He's doing just fine and can weather a rebuild with lower attendance over a period of time.

[Funkhouser]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

Yes, the Flames basically operate to break even each year. And that's with a full barn.

They face 3 problems right now:
1) the cap is escalating dramatically (expenses are rising)
2) their revenues are declining (tickets sales are off significantly)
3) the new arena requires a $17M annual payment to the city, on top of expenses

They need revenues to be up substantially when the new arena opens. And with the way ticket sales are going right now, they have reason for concern.

Remember when people said fans would support a rebuild? Well, right now, they aren't. And the rebuild hasn't even started yet!

Fans can't support something that doesn't exist.
Teams either sell winning or they sell hope. The Flames have done neither for 3 seasons. This is why ticket sales are falling.

Lean into the rebuild, build excitement through elite young talent and exciting hockey (see Bob Hartley era), and the fans will support this club.

Put out a mediocre product and tell fans we will have more of the same - then you have what you see now.

[The Yen Man]

Kadri's trade value is probably at it's peak right now or coming close to it, and will never be this high after this season IMO. Why risk holding onto a player that can rapidly depreciate in value due to age, when you can trade him for something that can help the team in the long run.

I do get the frustration of fans because sure, Maloney could be just saying this to not demotivate the team, but it did nothing but stoke more frustration amongst the fans. He would have been way better off not doing the interview at all.

Or, even more simple, just say "we believe in the team, and the guys in the locker room. We're disappointed so far in where we're at, but all options are always looked at to ensure the team will have long term success". Done. Even a pleb like me can come up with that. Who the hell is their PR guy?

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

The new arena is the reason for their biggest jump. The stars etc, didn't do anything if you look at it year by year. And they made more PO revenue over the last few years.

Well the stars namely McDavid is what drove the playoff revenue/

You're the one who said Edmonton magically had 3x more revenue and it's why they could sustain a rebuild, I'm just showing you that you were wrong and before McDavid and the new arena it was flat

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

He's doing just fine and can weather a rebuild with lower attendance over a period of time.

You do know he’s a minority owner, right? The whole group has to be on board with taking operating losses and putting in their own cash to make up for that.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Funkhouser

Fans can't support something that doesn't exist.
Teams either sell winning or they sell hope. The Flames have done neither for 3 seasons. This is why ticket sales are falling.

Lean into the rebuild, build excitement through elite young talent and exciting hockey (see Bob Hartley era), and the fans will support this club.

Put out a mediocre product and tell fans we will have more of the same - then you have what you see now.

Well, now we are talking messaging, which is fine. I don't think anyone disagrees that the Flames could do a way better job at that, and that maybe ownership underestimates fans' patience (though there's no evidence of what fans would do here with a message of "we're rebuilding but keep buying seasons tix while we do".

But lost of people here confuse poor messaging with what the actual structural actions have been and are going forward. Which is clearly a rebuild (but not a panicked fire sale).

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Well the stars namely McDavid is what drove the playoff revenue/

You're the one who said Edmonton magically had 3x more revenue and it's why they could sustain a rebuild, I'm just showing you that you were wrong and before McDavid and the new arena it was flat

It wasn't flat - they've always had more revenue. McDavid didn't change the arc. The massive deal they made with the city and huge price hikes made the difference (a free arena will do that).

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

It wasn't flat - they've always had more revenue. McDavid didn't change the arc. The massive deal they made with the city and huge price hikes made the difference (a free arena will do that).

You're right it wasn't flat, according to that data I just provided the Flames had more revenue from 05-06 to 14-15.

So please if you have a different source then shows the evidence that the Oilers had substantially more revenue (3x as you said) prior to the new arena and McDavid.

[Bonded]

Originally Posted by Funkhouser

Fans can't support something that doesn't exist.
Teams either sell winning or they sell hope. The Flames have done neither for 3 seasons. This is why ticket sales are falling.

Lean into the rebuild, build excitement through elite young talent and exciting hockey (see Bob Hartley era), and the fans will support this club.

Put out a mediocre product and tell fans we will have more of the same - then you have what you see now.

Fans want to pay to see a team win. People won’t want to pay for games no matter how much they hear about the draft picks coming over the next two to three years. San Jose is hope central and had the lowest attendance last year and has only improved slightly this year.

[Inferno]

Yep, people can say that fans would still support the team but eventually losing starts to wear on the fans and rather than spend money to watch them get embarrassed in person they would rather watch it at home if at all.

[Burning Beard]

Originally Posted by Funkhouser

Fans can't support something that doesn't exist.
Teams either sell winning or they sell hope. The Flames have done neither for 3 seasons. This is why ticket sales are falling.

Lean into the rebuild, build excitement through elite young talent and exciting hockey (see Bob Hartley era), and the fans will support this club.

Put out a mediocre product and tell fans we will have more of the same - then you have what you see now.

This is a pipe dream early in any rebuild until you get the high draft pick talent (and even for a season or two after). I sure don't recall many entertaining Sharks or Hawks games the last couple of years until this one.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

Personally, I have no doubt fans will support the team once they start to improve. And I have no doubt that the new arena will be a huge success for them and the city. But it is far from the no brainer, LMAO that some of you think it is.

It's really important for the long term that the organization doesn't botch this rebuild. If Edwards is mandating a winning team for the opening season of the new arena, I expect that long term outlook will be pretty bleak for the organization as it's just going to be a repeat of Treliving's tenure where they go from bad to good/not great, to really bad. A proper rebuild should probably go a year or two into the new arena. The team will have to be creative in selling the future stars providing the team is bad enough in the next few seasons to amass a couple of franchise cornerstones. As of now they really don't have that player outside of the crease but that could change this summer. Save for Gridin and Parekh I don't see much to get excited about at the present time.

[traptor]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

It's really important for the long term that the organization doesn't botch this rebuild. If Edwards is mandating a winning team for the opening season of the new arena, I expect that long term outlook will be pretty bleak for the organization as it's just going to be a repeat of Treliving's tenure where they go from bad to good/not great, to really bad. A proper rebuild should probably go a year or two into the new arena. The team will have to be creative in selling the future stars providing the team is bad enough in the next few seasons to amass a couple of franchise cornerstones. As of now they really don't have that player outside of the crease but that could change this summer. Save for Gridin and Parekh I don't see much to get excited about at the present time.

I agree but honestly the Trieliving era is looking pretty good.

They had a competitive team, it just got blown apart 5-10 years too early.
Before it got blown apart was some of the best hockey the Flames have played. They were decenetly deep. They had the best line in the NHL, with multi 100pt and 40g players. They had a good d-core and should of had good goaltending. And they just made it to the second round, beating a solid Stars team. We still had Wolf, Coronato, Zary and Pelts in the system.

There were mistakes made building it up, but it was a good group if they could of played it out.

The current outlook is a long way off from that. Hopefully they do it right, are a bit more patient and actually retain their stars this time.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Oilers would likely have more revenue than the Flames either way, but the reason it's 3x is because they got a star young player and then built a winning roster (even if it was through mismanagement)

And yes the Oilers getting McDavid was luck, but the Oilers also never really shied away from just admitting when a season was lost and leaning into it.

Sure They didn't plan on being bad in the 14-15 season, but when it was obvious they would be they 100% leaned in and traded guys like David Perron (26), Jeff Petry (26) to lean into it even harder and add more picks.

The Oilers traded prime aged players to add extra picks (the Perron pick was the Barzal 1st, Perry 2nd was Jonas siegenthaler, the Oilers turning those extra picks into Griffon Reinhart is a different issue)

Yet the Flames can't even commit to trading 35+ year old players during their unexpectedly bad season.

The Oilers waited all the way to March to trade Petry and I don’t recall them ever committing to trading him. They also refused to trade Derek Roy, Benoit Pouliot, Teddy Purcell, Andrew Ference, Boyd Gordon.

[Royle9]

For the health and safety of a number of people on here, I sure hope Craig makes a trade.
I understand the angst, I really do, but some take it just too far.

[howard_the_duck]

Originally Posted by browna

The problem with the Flames at the hockey ops level, was when Sutter was fired, was that the team was supposed to crash. They had the mandate to clear out the big contracts and those that didn’t want to be here. However, this was for the purpose and goal always, to not still be on the downswing/or on a decent upswing at least, going into the new building.

It now looks like they will stink going into the new building, due to Conroy maybe over estimating some of the ability to make the moves he envisioned in the last two seasons, to have this team on the upswing by now.

So now a bit at the crossroads. And yeah regardless it’s tough messaging for the GM and organization to admins before US Thanksgiving, to basically say you’re out of the playoffs. It hasn’t been this bad/hopeless this early for the Flames since probably 2000 or 2001 and the media landscape was a lot different back then and how to approach things so there’s not a lot of experience.

At the end of the day…it’s public relations, not rocket science. There are plenty of examples and expertise to draw from.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Royle9

For the health and safety of a number of people on here, I sure hope Craig makes a trade.
I understand the angst, I really do, but some take it just too far.

It is almost unforgivable that Craig has not made a trade. So many trades historically take place in October and the first half of November to not have made one is baffling.

[Calgary Highlander]

I wonder what Hanlon's role is in this.

He's on the management team, and he had to have known that interview would be a disaster. So he either wasn't consulted or he was ignored.

[Ashasx]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Newflash - the revenues were like that before McDavid. Before Taylor Hall and RNH in fact.

This is not an unexpectedly bad season. Last year was unexpectedly good (remember - the year they traded a bunch of older players?).

Lmao why is it always the one side of this argument that is always so rude and combative.