Duhatschek: Johnny Gaudreau feels at home in Calgary

[Bingo]

Funny how nobody is wondering if the Flames should keep him.

Given the way that salaries are going it might take a 8 year x $14M contract to get that done which would begin at age 29

[robertsfanatic]

I've only visited Calgary twice and I think it's one of the nicer cities in Canada so why wouldn't he want to stay?

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Funny how nobody is wondering if the Flames should keep him.

Given the way that salaries are going it might take a 8 year x $14M contract to get that done which would begin at age 29

That is quite true.

Hopefully sanity will prevail by then, in terms of the salary distribution within a team which is required to be successful. And hopefully Johnny is more like a Crosby, who has been worth more than the 8.7 he has been taking for a long time.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Funny how nobody is wondering if the Flames should keep him.

Given the way that salaries are going it might take a 8 year x $14M contract to get that done which would begin at age 29

It's a great question. But I don't see top end salaries continuing to escalate that quickly. If they do, each team will end up with a few stars getting paid, and everyone else getting $2M or less.

The current trends are unsustainable.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Funny how nobody is wondering if the Flames should keep him.

Given the way that salaries are going it might take a 8 year x $14M contract to get that done which would begin at age 29

To me it's the same as the relative "answer" provided by the article. If we have won a cup or two then I think you resign him no matter what. If we're still facing first round exits then...

[midniteowl]

Originally Posted by getbak

That reminds me of a story I read (probably posted here a long time ago) after the whole Pronger situation went down in Edmonton. One of the local reporters reached out to Conroy's wife to talk about the difficulties of raising a family while your husband's a pro hockey player. During the interview, she told a story about one of her daughters being given an assignment to write about "if I could live anywhere in the world, where would it be" while they were living in LA. Most of the other kids in the class wrote about other big cities in the States or places like Paris or Hawaii. Their daughter wrote about living in Calgary.

That's one hell of a smart girl!

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Funny how nobody is wondering if the Flames should keep him.

Given the way that salaries are going it might take a 8 year x $14M contract to get that done which would begin at age 29

Yup.
There are many questions the organization needs to answer next off-season
1. Does Johnny want to be part of the long-term future in Calgary
2. At what price?
3. Is he a guy they can allocate that much salary to and expect to win.

Not easy answers, and it's not just about him wanting to be here. That's easy for him to say. Harder once you introduce the $ into it. For both sides.

[Yoho]

Jonny is the straw that stirs the drink IMO. I think I would have a harder time extending Monahan.

[TheScorpion]

I wouldn't have a hard time extending either of them. They're both tremendous players with great chemistry, regardless of which one is better.

[agulati]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

I wouldn't have a hard time extending either of them. They're both tremendous players with great chemistry, regardless of which one is better.

Depends on the price and how our current and future prospects progress. Though, I would be more on board with signing Gaudreau. There is still lots of time on both their contracts. Gaudreau has three years remaining and Monahan has 4. By that time, we might have other players stepping in or ready to step in and take those responsibilities.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Funny how nobody is wondering if the Flames should keep him.

Given the way that salaries are going it might take a 8 year x $14M contract to get that done which would begin at age 29

I don't think you can win with that contract personally.

My opinion is well established on this I think:

The Flames can potentially win twice with Tkachuk but only once with Gaudreau. In my mind, you're looking to extend Tkachuk for the full 8 years as your transition anchor.

I think you're looking at the next 2 years as your window before you need to consider

1) a hard sell
2) re-draft core forward group
3) contending window with Tkachuk as the established veteran in years 6,7,8 of his deal

Moving Gaudreau in the final year of his deal is a way to cut down on the time it would take to rebuild or re-load the roster.

The key is that Calgary looks like they have 2-3 guys who will be prime aged defenders right in line with the sequence of ages you want from your forward group, drafting them after you've got your stable of defenders.

29 year old Andersson, 27 year old Hanifin, 26 year old Valimaki, 29 year old Tkachuk. It's cheaper to pay for defense than offense, so ideally you've got your defenders signed for UFA years and your forwards are on ELCs or late bloomers on ELC+1.

Then move Tkachuk at the end of his 8 year deal.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Funny how nobody is wondering if the Flames should keep him.

Given the way that salaries are going it might take a 8 year x $14M contract to get that done which would begin at age 29

Ask me in 2 years. We should certainly have an idea if this team has championship chops by then.

[jayswin]

If you make the tough decision to trade Gaudreau I think you have to do it this coming off season, not the one with a year left on the contract. This organization has done a lot of good things but they blow at getting quality back for premium assets.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by jayswin

If you make the tough decision to trade Gaudreau I think you have to do it this coming off season, not the one with a year left on the contract. This organization has done a lot of good things but they blow at getting quality back for premium assets.

The returns on Iggy and Jaybo were terrible. But that's Feaster - I can think of maybe one or two trades involving player for player he won (Bourque for Cammi). Sutter traded Phanuef for almost no one. Though I continue to think fondly of Stajan.

But if you consider Hamilton a premium asset, that was a good one. After that, for Treliving, you are looking at selloffs like Hudler and Glencross (and the returns were pretty decent).

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by jayswin

If you make the tough decision to trade Gaudreau I think you have to do it this coming off season, not the one with a year left on the contract. This organization has done a lot of good things but they blow at getting quality back for premium assets.

Hudler? Hanifin? Lindholm? Yes, in past years the Flames have disappointed for not getting better returns on Iginla and Bouwmeester as they entered their rebuild, but it is incredibly difficult for all teams in the midst of their competitive window to get high returns for all their players whose contracts might expire into free agency. I don't really think the Flames are very different in this regard.

As for potentially trading Gaudreau, I have wondered if this summer presents a unique opportunity to do so. +$20 m of contracts will be coming off the cap, so there will be some roster re-shaping, and with Taylor Hall entering UFA, maybe the Flames make a pitch for him, and move Gaudreau for high-value cost controlled assets.

[Jiri Hrdina]

One of the problems plaguing this organization in the long-run is a lack of overall assets.
And one of the drivers of that is that if you look at the last "core" of the team - they literally have nothing to show for the core of Iginla, Regehr, Kipper, Bouwmeester, Langkow. Nothing.

You simply can't do that. At least not over and over again.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by jayswin

If you make the tough decision to trade Gaudreau I think you have to do it this coming off season, not the one with a year left on the contract. This organization has done a lot of good things but they blow at getting quality back for premium assets.

That's tough for me because of how the other contracts are structured.

I think you owe it to the group to give them 2 years to go for it, then you're looking at a tear down to move Gio to a team where he has a chance to win and gaudreau with his ntc gets to choose the market that works best for him. I think if a team wants him long term, you can probably get a bit more from sending him where he wants to go. Work with him and his agent to find out where that is and move him early in the summer, before or at the draft, to that location and maybe he signs an extension right away.

There's value in that.

IMO if you're moving gaudreau you're tearing things down, so you're talking Monahan, Backlund, Giordano, Bennett and waiting out the clock on Lucic.

Plus, you can time it with the seattle expansion draft and maybe help out some teams struggling with their lineup or cap situation and earn some picks or prospects in the process, further speeding up the process.

I don't want to go back to watching mediocre hockey in a year, either.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

One of the problems plaguing this organization in the long-run is a lack of overall assets.
And one of the drivers of that is that if you look at the last "core" of the team - they literally have nothing to show for the core of Iginla, Regehr, Kipper, Bouwmeester, Langkow. Nothing.

You simply can't do that. At least not over and over again.

I get what you are saying, but I am not overly convinced that this is such a serious issue. Which NHL teams have done an exemplary job of successfully turning their core players over into new high-value assets which form the base of a new group?

Maybe Boston? They are pretty draconian when it comes to evaluating players, and have moved a tonne of them in return for high picks and other assets (Lucic, Hamilton, Seguin), but their current core consists predominantly of players they have drafted with their own picks, and NOT through trades.

I think the lesson from a team like Boston is that it is more important to make the most of late draft picks: Bergeron #45; Marchand #71; Krejci #63; Carlo #37; Heinen #116; Pastrnak #24; Krug (undrafted). This is encouraging, because this is precisely what we see happening in Calgary most recently. For the shortage of long term assets that the Flames seemingly have, they have sure had a lot of success recently with graduating young, promising players.

[Jiri Hrdina]

^What makes Calgary unique is that over the long-term they have been pretty awful at managing the asset base via
- Trading players for next to nothing or past the point you can extract value from them
- Letting future core players walk or giving them away
- Poor drafting over sustained periods of time (Chucko, Irving, Pelech, etc).

You can look at each case in isolation and understand why, but ultimately you have to win more than you lose with each of these decisions. And I think under the current regime they are doing that. But for a very long-term that wasn't the case.

Lose trades
Allow good players to walk
Draft poorly

That creates an asset poor organization that becomes a hard hole to dig out of.

They have started to dig out now - but losing an asset like Johnny for little will just be a repeat of it.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

^What makes Calgary unique is that over the long-term they have been pretty awful at managing the asset base via
- Trading players for next to nothing or past the point you can extract value from them
- Letting future core players walk or giving them away
- Poor drafting over sustained periods of time (Chucko, Irving, Pelech, etc).

You can look at each case in isolation and understand why, but ultimately you have to win more than you lose with each of these decisions. And I think under the current regime they are doing that. But for a very long-term that wasn't the case.

Lose trades
Allow good players to walk
Draft poorly

That creates an asset poor organization that becomes a hard hole to dig out of.

Right, but we both agree that the Flames have been much improved in all three of those aspects of asset management more recently. For my money, getting consistently good returns in trades and at the draft are far and away much more important than how the team handles pending UFAs. If we are to rank the importance of these, it looks more like this:

1. Drafting
2. Trades



3. UFA asset recapture

They have started to dig out now - but losing an asset like Johnny for little will just be a repeat of it.

I think this is an overstatement—so long as the Flames continue to draft well and get good value in trades, then while walking Gaudreau to UFA for nothing would not be ideal, it would also not be such a detrimental blow on its own to irreparably set them back.

All that said, I expect that Gaudreau will be traded in the next two years unless there is an extension in the works that makes sense for both parties. Unlike Flash Walken, I do not expect a Gaudreau trade to trigger a rebuild:

· the forward group will still comprise Monahan, Tkachuk, Lindholm, and whomever fills the #1/2 LW hole all under the age of 27
· the blue line will feature three defensemen in the top-four all under 25
· This is to say nothing for the emergence of new players already in the system, or received in return for future asset recapture

Such is not the time nor circumstances under which to tear everything down and start over.