How much flak are you taking as a Flames fan?

[stignasty]

Originally Posted by Ruttiger

You don’t have a hope in hell of coming out of this gracefully. Your team is full of nobodies, your farm club is full of never will bes, and the picks who haven’t even been made yet will be wasted on the Mark Jankowskis of the world.

Yours Truly,

Oilers Fan

The problem with the reasoning behind this letter is that the author makes the mistake of assuming that the Flames management will be as inept as the Oilers management. It might turn out that they are. It might also turn out that the Flames scouts knew what they were doing when they drafted Jankowski. Time will tell.

That being said, even teams with proven records building through the draft make mistakes. All of Chicago's first round draft picks didn't pan out either. To hold up Jankowski (who is yet to be tested in the NHL) as a failure and declare an organization as being doomed is ridiculous. That would be like claiming that the Chicago Blackhawks are a bad organization because they drafted Jack Skille seventh over all.

As it is, I'm not prepared to abandon hope. The Flames have three picks in what is expected to be an unusually deep draft. I'm okay with that right now. They will pick three players not named Gagner, Plante, and Nash. They will pick three players that their scouts think will be potential NHL players sometime in the future. It's too soon to assume that they won't be.

Misery loves company. It's clear the Oilers fan base has a good reason to be miserable. I'm not happy about the way the Flames have been managed over the past few years, but that doesn't mean we're doomed to repeat the Oilers failure. But, like I wrote earlier, time will tell. Unless the letter writer has a crystal ball, his arguments about what the future will bring are pretty much without any merit.

[JonDuke]

I don't care about the flak. I've served so much of it in the past years to Leaf/Oiler/Canuck fans that I am ok with being on the receiving end this time. I have been for a few years now, but it's all good.

[FlamesAddiction]

I live in Ontario so I get no flak. In fact, the Oiler and Canuck fans I do know think we are finally on the right track. I also don't think we are a pleasure to defeat anymore because we are Iginla-less.

I think the closest thing I have received to flak was from Pittsburgh fans that are utterly shocked that I won't root for the Pens and then questioned how I can keep rooting for a terrible team. I told them that it was something that bandwagoners could never understand.

[Sainters7]

Originally Posted by Ruttiger

You see, my team had done reasonably well for a few years at the time and made a Playoff run all the way to Game 7 of the Cup Final the year before (Unlike your Flames franchise, my Oilers weren’t given nearly a Decade to try and recapture the magic).

This part especially annoyed me. It suggests the Flames have been on fumes and denial since right after the '04 run, while the Oilers instantly knew after '06 it was over and tried to rebuild. Is that why Lowe pretty much tried to sign every UFA to multi-term, ridiculously overpriced salaries that kept them at a surprisingly high cap number for a bottom-feeder until only recently?

The Oilers didn't get a decade because pretty much right after their run, most of their impending veteran FA's were practically tripping over each other running out of town. Yet despite this, they still tried to stay in the mix, throwing big money offers at guys like Jagr, Penner, Heatley, Nylander, Vanek, etc, for another 3 seasons, before they ended up last anyway, and finally decided to throw in the towel.

Calgary held on to their aging core 2-3 years too long and had lots of playoff disappointment, but from 04-09 they were still a good team, and a legit Stanley Cup contender in '06 and '09 (pre-late season injuries). The season after the Cup run (05-06), the Flames had over 100 points, won the division, and were absolutely on fire down the stretch, they looked like they were going back to the Cup before the Anaheim choke.

Point is, to compare the 2 as similar in terms of what they looked like in the years right after their respective runs is ridiculous. Calgary held on because they actually still had something to hold on to, and had competitive, mid 90's to over 100 point seasons the next 4 years. They didn't just go right back to the dump the year after, like the Oilers did. It wasn't until about 2010 when the Flames needed to let it go & start over.

[Inglewood Jack]

Originally Posted by moon

If they aren't already there they sure are damn close.

The good news for Flames fans is there is still time to can this train wreck of a management group.

But if Feaster and his merry band of idiots are running the show I wouldn't expect much better results than what Lowbellini got.

What Feaster's team has proven so far is that they are incapable of making a contender out of an aging, creaky ship. I don't know what management group could accomplish that, but we should be catching flak for the attempt itself more than the results.

The rebuild is a totally new challenge that we don't have much evidence to go by. They might still suck at it, but I'd bet money it won't be as history-making bad as the oilers. That's why we don't need to listen to grease fans that say our future is the same as theirs.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Cali Flames Fan

Where I live I tell people I'm a Flames fan and they just stare blankly at me. I don't care how much progress they say has been made for hockey in California, most people have no idea there's even a league.

I definitely do not think that is true at all

[burn_baby_burn]

Living on the front lines in Red Deer, I get it all the time. Nothing really has changed. My biggest fear, was that my son would grow up an Oilers fan. If the Oilers and their young talent turned the corner when he was at a young and impressionable age with all his little friends being Oilers fans. Well, I have managed to turn him into a Flames fan (poor kid).

[Stay Golden]

I'm not taking any flak for being a Flames fan. It is easy to diffuse that situation with some yapper.

[ReinhartonD]

Same as some others here--got more flack months ago but now people recognize things are going in the right direction. A 'nucklehead fan actually confessed he thinks we'll win our next cup before they get one, since we're going to draft high enough to get cornerstone-type players probably this year and next year, while they'll watch their stars get old without adding what they need to get better, and they keep drafting around 24th or later.

In four years our rivalry will be once again the hated mulletheads, and the canucks will be irrelevant.