Flames Identity Crisis

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

I doubt the owners are specifying to trade picks but I can imagine that they are placing short term goals on the management team, which then would create the behaviour we’ve seen. Short term goals and thinking plus being asset poor means the gm has been driven to use what he can to plug.

It’s the entire strategy that has been wrong for decades

And again I don’t know why you continue to compare to Toronto given the advantages they’ve enjoyed.

Feaster isn’t a fair comparison as the team was actually rebuilding at the time. Indeed Sutter is a more fair comparison and he too used picks to fill holes.

That may well be the case, let's assume it is true and owners are placing short term goals ahead and order that as a philosophy. Bras almost exclusively trades picks. His list of NHL player for NHL player trades is the following

Lucic trade
Lindholm and Hanifin trade
Lazar trade if you are being generous

3 player for player trades in 7 years.

Sutter may well have had the same orders, but he did manage to accumulate late round picks and traded fewer high round picks. But Darryl also made NHL player for NHL player trades. As a comparison Darryl made 20 NHL player for NHL player trades in 8 seasons. Those included some major moves as well (Langkow trade, Tanguay trade, Warrener trade, Simon trade, Jokinen trade, Phaneuf trade, Huselius trade). Not all his trades were good but he seemed to have the ability to trade player for player and not just draft picks for player.

[timbit]

IMO, the absence of many key players’ mental toughness has been the proverbial dagger in the Flames’ heart for a long time.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by timbit

IMO, the absence of many key players’ mental toughness has been the proverbial dagger in the Flames’ heart for a long time.

I’ve never wanted to believe it, but it’s hard to argue.

And I am not referring to a lack fo what I think are performative shows of emotion like getting excited over goals or engaging in a lot of scrums. I mean they don’t react well to adversity. Backlund out destroyed them against the Canucks. Any early penalty takes the wind out, even if they kill it. They don’t push back after a goal, and when they do score to make a game closer or even tie it, they relax (and get scored on).

[ComixZone]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

On this point, I continue to believe that this organization's biggest long-term issue is they are asset poor. This has been due to the following reasons that have cut across multiple GMs
- Not trading core players in time to net appropriate value (again the most recent example being what they got from the collective group of Iginla, Bouw, Kipper, Langkow, and Regehr)
- When they have traded core players it has been to address short-term holes (e.g. Phaneuf)
- Poor drafting (e.g. the Pelech, Chucko, Irving, Nemisz string of years)
- Trading picks to patch holes (yes I agree with that)
- Lack of patience. Each re-build attempt has been undermined by trying to accelerate it

The organization is constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul instead of building up an asset base, so that when you are ready to contend you can spend some of that capital to put the team over the edge.

This franchise has needed more assets for decades, and continues to piddle them away. And again it's a pattern that I would argue dates back to the moment Fletcher left.

So why? Is it the owners lacking patience and applying pressure? Is the GMs over promising when/what they can deliver?
Is it the so-called pressure of a Canadian market? I would suggest fans in Canada would more fully understand the need for a proper re-build, yet we see each Canadian team make this mistake over and over again. The Canucks literally followed the flawed Flames blueprint to a tee!

This is the thing that kills me.

Sell us HOPE. We’ll buy it. Hope is super easy to market well, and Canadian markets would be perfect for it.

Instead? It’s always a rush to mediocrity.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

That may well be the case, let's assume it is true and owners are placing short term goals ahead and order that as a philosophy. Bras almost exclusively trades picks. His list of NHL player for NHL player trades is the following

Lucic trade
Lindholm and Hanifin trade
Lazar trade if you are being generous

3 player for player trades in 7 years.

Sutter may well have had the same orders, but he did manage to accumulate late round picks and traded fewer high round picks. But Darryl also made NHL player for NHL player trades. As a comparison Darryl made 20 NHL player for NHL player trades in 8 seasons. Those included some major moves as well (Langkow trade, Tanguay trade, Warrener trade, Simon trade, Jokinen trade, Phaneuf trade, Huselius trade). Not all his trades were good but he seemed to have the ability to trade player for player and not just draft picks for player.

Treliving’s been willing to make player for player trades on at least a couple other times I can think of, but he got vetoed by a NTC.

I mean, it’s fine to say Sutter traded players for players, but he wasn’t very good at it, especially later on. Higgins and Kotalik for Jokinen and Prust?

[Classic_Sniper]

Originally Posted by TheSquatch

Feaster came in after what most of us would call a debacle of Sutter-ian GMing, trading Jokkinen for Kotalik and then bringing Jokkinen back again, just blowing away picks like they were worthless.

And when Feaster took the reins I thought "Oh, thank God, some sanity." And in his first presser, he said the mandate from ownership was to make the playoffs. No rebuild.

Same thing Sutter said. And acted on.

Make the playoffs. Ken King was transparent about this. That's what the ownership group wants.

So the result is this teetering team, never bad enough to draft high, never good enough to beat the best (what's the Flames record in the regular season against playoff teams? It's never great. Flames poach points off of bad teams and scrape in.).

It is what it is now. A cap team with minimal genuine assets on the farm, and a pretty good team on the ice (at best), but not a world beater.

The Flames really just needed to bottom out once in their rebuilding years and pick up that big #1 center they've been searching for forever, this team would be so much further ahead. The 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 drafts all had elite #1 centers right at the very top. Instead, the Flames end up picking #6, #4, #15, #6 in those years. It's hard to win when you're not picking top tier players and and you have to watch other teams pick up top tier players. That's a big swing.

[Boreal]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

I’ve never wanted to believe it, but it’s hard to argue.

And I am not referring to a lack fo what I think are performative shows of emotion like getting excited over goals or engaging in a lot of scrums. I mean they don’t react well to adversity. Backlund out destroyed them against the Canucks. Any early penalty takes the wind out, even if they kill it. They don’t push back after a goal, and when they do score to make a game closer or even tie it, they relax (and get scored on).

It was evidenced to me, later in the 2018 season when they collapsed against Vegas.

I thought they might have purged this with the exit of Hamilton & the entrance of Bill Peters.

Then the Colorado series happened... they wilted against adversity.
The the Dallas series happened... they wilted against adversity.

Then need to reset the core around something like Andersson, Lindholm & Tkachuk, then go from there.

[Classic_Sniper]

Darryl hasn’t even coached a game yet, but I think it’s safe to say the new Calgary Flames identity will be Hard Working. Maybe the hardest workers in the league short term. Darryl has an aura about him and I think his reputation alone will garner respect and fear from every player. I could see this team taking on the personality of their new coach and who knows, maybe they might be able to make some noise if they buy in and sacrifice mind, body and soul.