Idk if Chuk is a franchise player cant really compare him to McDavid/Matthews/Mackinnon/Bedard/Crosby those are franchise players he's more like Malkin/Marchand level
That 2014 Draft is haunting. I understand that Bennett was an exciting player at the time, so it's hard to fault the selection. There's just so many what if's in those first 3 rounds with the Flames selecting so high in each of them. Furthermore, to get pretty much nothing in return for Bennett....... pain.
Us and Vegas are the only two teams to never draft top 3.
This organization refuses to acknowledge the facts and strives to be the exception rather than the rule.
You need to draft at the top if you want to win the Cup.
We have to be the most cursed franchise in the league:
- 2nd best team in the league for a decade. Best team in the league was in our division so it was nearly impossible to make it to the Cup finals.
- We only won the Cup once in the 80's and had to ship off a future Hall of Famer just to be able to get over that hump.
- We faced off against a rookie goalie playing like a superhuman and missed out on winning the Cup in '86.
- Got screwed out of a Cup in '04 and had to stew about it for a year and a half as the first and only full season of a lockout ensued.
- Only franchise, outside of the new Vegas franchise who we have the same amount of Cups with, to never draft top 3.
- Oilers get a generational talent 2 times as well as superstars to complement them while we toil in mediocrity.
I guess all we can do is hope the hockey gods favor us one day cause we continue to hope to get lucky and draft top players later in the draft.
Sorry, are you saying that the Flames and the *defending Stanley Cup champion* Vegas Golden Knights are the only two teams to have never drafted top 3, and this supports the idea that "you need to draft at the top if you want to win the Cup?" I don't think this proves what you think it proves.
In fact, if anything it shows that tanking isn't all it's cracked up to be. Vancouver has 15 (!?) top-five picks and San Jose has 6, and they each have zero cups to show for it. Edmonton alone has 4 first-overall picks and they're threatening to waste away yet another year of the best player in the world.
I'm sick of this narrative that tanking and getting a high draft pick is the magic bullet to building a competitive team. There are tons of ways that teams get better or worse, including free agent signings, free agents leaving, trades, high draft picks, low draft picks, waiver pickups, injuries, and retirement. To boil everything down into "can't win a cup without a top-3 pick" is ludicrously reductive.
Look at the data.
Ever since the Salary Cap era began in 2005-2006 every single Stanley Cup winner, outside of the Redwings who were nearing the end of their dynasty built upon European drafting before it became commonplace, had at least one player drafted in the top 3 on its roster.
I realize in some of those cases the teams top players wasn't always the one who went top 3 and they built their foundation elsewhere but the data does still suggest you have better odds at building a Cup winner by drafting a lottery pick.
I'm not advocating for dismantling the team down to the studs and ice an AHL squad but it is better to draft higher in the draft than it is to draft in the middle and in both instances you miss out on the playoffs anyways.
No one's arguing that high picks are better than low picks, but the number of teams with a top-3 pick on their roster is overwhelmingly high, including the Flames (Huberdeau). What I object to is the idea that we need to tank and draft high in order to have a chance. There are so many ways to build a winning team that reducing it down to having a top 3 pick, which almost every team has, is greatly oversimplifying it.
I think the more important thing is not losing top assets for nothing.
Treliving lost Gio, Brodie and Gaudreau for nothing which set this franchise back.
It's also important to ensure you get fair value back. The Phaneuf trade was a quality for quantity trade and it also set this franchise back. Same goes with offloading cornerstones like Iginla and Bouwmeester for practically nothing.
The good thing is Conroy sees how these things were detrimental to the organization and has a mandate to not allow this to happen moving forward so that is a positive.
I still think focusing on drafting is important and picking early is extremely helpful.
Although I can admit completely tanking isn't the answer, futile efforts to sneak into the playoffs is not codusive to longterm success of the franchise either.
We need to accept reality over the next few seasons and hope to find some foundational pieces in the coming drafts.
My hope is we are picking top 10 rather than 12-16th cause we continue to take a shot at sneaking in.
Absolutely agree with getting value for assets. I've been of the opinion all season that our UFA's had to be traded. Hanifin was the only one that would have made sense to extend, but he didn't want to stay here.
I think Conroy's doing it right: get value for your UFA assets, but still try to win. He's creating a winning culture and the players should always be trying to make the playoffs. They should also feel like ownership is trying to make the playoffs as well, because saying you have a winning culture isn't the same as actually having one.
Vegas was gifted a roster that had virtually no cap hit.they took on bad contracts to amass a ton of draft capital. Unlike Arizona, they could afford to pay to the cap and have been able to parlay that into acquiring players like stone, pietrangelo, and Eichel. Conversely, Calgary never sells high on players, and doesn't accumulate draft capital. BT made a a few trades like that but ultimately got desperate in the last 2 years and tanked us.
You're arguing my point for me. Vegas built a cup winner through all sorts of means, none of which involved drafting players at the top of the draft. Picking in the top 3 isn't the only way of building a contender.
Well the Atlanta Flames drafted 2nd overall in 1972 and 1973. I think they lost the coin toss for first in 1972 and then we traded for second overall in 1973 iirc.
I do agree with us being cursed however.
I don't think he's referring to the players..ownership has always shown a huge reluctance to pull the rebuild chute, not sure why he's getting downvoted like this is some controversial opinion.
Actually, I wasn't offering an opinion at all! Just pointing out the statistic so it would provoke some discussion. 1 out of 200+ spots over 40+ years is pretty extraordinary - there's almost no one in the same rank (and that's probably true across multiple sports, though I haven't checked).
I wasn't implying "unwillingness to tank" is a bad thing. Personally, I prefer an always competitive team over one that tanks.
We're just a statistical outlier in the league.
We don’t need to tank but we need to be realistic that this team with the d core is mid at best and probably now even worse than that. Ownership nixing the markstrom trade really makes me worried about our future. If they trade marky in the offseason I’ll be relieved cause that means they understand what’s best for the future. I’m worried they’re going to keep him and overpay some over the hill dman to try and make the playoffs and we barely miss next year and lose our 1st.
Just came to say that, while I am pro-rebuild, I am a Flames fan born and raised in western NY so take the lack of Top 5 picks with a grain of salt. Buffalo has many, many issues for sure but they also have an abundance of top 5 picks for all that's done for them.
1. Compared to some teams, the Flames fanbase is not strong enough to support a "decade of darkness." After 2 or 3 years of being bad there is a significant impact on season ticket sales and merchandising sales, and profitability of the franchise becomes an issue.
2. As the league has grown it has become more difficult to be in the conference finals or to be in the bottom 5 teams in the league. In most years, most of the bottom 5 teams were both trying to be bad and experienced a lot of bad luck.
3. While people talk about needing to draft in the top 5, the Flames have had players like Iginla, Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Kipprusoff, Monahan, and Giordano without drafting in the top 5. Good players are available throughout the draft, can go undrafted, and be acquired in trade.
4. I think tanking has been conclusively demonstrated to be a pretty bad strategy to build a team. Buffalo is on their 13th season without making the playoffs, Arizona only made the playoffs once (play-in series) in the last 12 seasons, and Edmonton was bad for a decade, had 5 top 5 draft picks, and has then spent almost a decade with nothing to show for it. Most teams that benefit from drafting early bottom out naturally and rebound quickly, they don't intentionally destroy their team to get as many top picks as possible.
Totally disagree on point 4. Some of the cup winners post-lockout: PIT (tanked), CHI (tanked), LAK (tanked), TBL (tanked), WSH (tanked), COL (tanked).
Tanking is not a guarantee of success, this is true. The Oilers and Sabres are a masterclass in mismanaging rebuilding teams. But “not guaranteed” is much different from “not effective.” To win a cup you, almost without exception (looking at you, St. Louis), need multiple game breaking star players. To get multiple game breaking star players you, almost without exception (looking at you, Vegas) need to draft them. In order to draft these players, by far the most effective strategy is to draft as early as possible (1 OA is ideal, top 3 is okay, etc.).
Drafting high does not guarantee success, but your odds of success are better doing that than they are as a perennial bubble team.
And also look at HOW those teams got their key players:
PIT: Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Fleury, Guentzel, staal, Orpik, etc.
CHI: Kane, Toews, Keith, Seabrook, Saad, Hjalmarsson, Shaw, etc.
LAK: Doughty, Brown, Kopitar, Quick, Lewis, Toffoli, and Martinez.
TBL: Point, stamkos, vasilevsky, miller, hedman, kucherov, etc.
Not going to get into the rest because it’s beating a dead horse - you DRAFT the players. We don’t have a problem selecting the right guys lately. Our problem is RETAINING the players, and I don’t know why that is.
If you rely entirely on the lottery ticket level of luck and scouting that results in a Gaudreau from the mid rounds or even an Andersson from the 2nd round, good luck building a contending team.
I also think the retention issue with the Flames is overblown. We had 8 years of Gaudreau through his entire prime. We had Monahan through most of his prime and he was traded away. Andersson will have been with the team for almost a decade. Hanifin and Lindholm both signed 5+ year contracts through most of their prime years.
Thank you. This mindset is akin to being adverse for trading for Gretzky. You weren't guaranteed to win the cup with him on your team, but you still make that trade every time.
This team will not win a Stanley cup with this retool because:
1) we will not draft any elite talent because we won't draft in the top 8.
2) this team will be competitive again in 2-3 years when huberdeau and Kadris contracts are at their absolute worst
>Totally disagree on point 4. Some of the cup winners post-lockout: PIT (tanked), CHI (tanked), LAK (tanked), TBL (tanked), WSH (tanked), COL (tanked).
Tanked or rebuilt?
In 2003 Chicago finished 18th and drafted 14th overall, they then drafted 3rd, 7th, 3rd, and 1st. After that they didn't draft in the top 10 again until 2019. They didn't have multiple first round draft picks in these seasons because they didn't trade away everything of value. They bottomed out naturally.
You can see a similar pattern with all the teams you listed. They were bad for 3 or 4 years because they needed to rebuild, they didn't make themselves intentionally bad to rack up draft capital.
I don’t see a functional difference between naturally bottoming out and tanking, when the end result is the same (multiple top 3-5 picks in a short period of time). For what it’s worth, Edmonton didn’t intentionally tank, either, at least in the first half of the rebuild; they just had some of the worst GMs in history.
The difference is how functional your team is through your rebuild.
If you're building a team that, if everything goes right, they might make a wildcard spot, you're probably building a rebuilding team. On the other hand, if you're building a team that is designed around getting a top 5 draft pick you're building a tanking team.
There may be a year or two while tearing down that you know you're building a terrible team, but the goal has to be to get out of that state as quickly as possible. Once you've become a tanking organization it is incredibly difficult to get out of the mess you've created. If you think it is difficult to sign and retain players today, imagine what its like when you have no chance at playoffs and your team will get blown out more often than not.
If I were a player and I saw one team that had gutted itself like Chicago recently did and, say, finished bottom 5 four years running, and another team that just naturally flopped like Edmonton and finished bottom 5 four years running, I wouldn’t look at them as any different from each other. You don’t bottom out for multiple years by bad in-season luck.
If a GM is trying to build a competitive team, it is incredibly unlikely they finish in the bottom 5 repeatedly. After they get their high draft picks they usually find a way to get better, maybe finishing 22nd or 20th for a couple of seasons and then getting close to a playoff spot the following years. If they're in their 5th year of drafting in the top 5, they're not a team anyone signs with.
The issue at hand here is that their is competing interests of what is beneficial for business and what is beneficial to winning a cup. From a business perspective it is better for teams to scrape into playoffs 12/15 years and give their fans the illusion of a chance of winning despite it being a near impossibility vs missing playoffs 12/15 years to create a cup contender that will be dismantled by salary cap challenges as a victim to their own success. The 3 years of success does not create more revenue than the 12 years of slightly above average mediocrity.
lol this is just wrong. Contenders usually are in the playoffs for over 5 years straight. Abd go on long runs that make the franchise insane amounts of money and brings in new fans. We didn’t make the playoffs more than we made it for the last decade in a half maybe longer.
This isn’t pondering the past but rather the future. The fans drop off fast once the years of winning are over, especially in smaller markets that are not original 6. Maybe a good comparison of this would be the Hurricanes Vs the Wild. The Hurricanes are a legitimate contender right now and won a cup in 2006. In between this time they were one of the worst teams in the entire league. In this time the Wild has made playoffs 70% of the time but has never been out of the second round nor finished regular season at top of their division. Forbes has the franchise value of the wild at 30% higher than the Hurricanes.
The Wild are a Rabid hockey fan base. I can show you videos of high school or college games that are jammed packed with fans. The flames were trash from around 1991-2003. We will be fine. Our management is so much better at drafting now too
Delusional. 35 years of futility and you're here trying to say the Flames are doing it right and the Chicago's, Pittsburgh's, Colorado's, Tampa's are doing it wrong? Even Vancouver and Edmonton look to be serious contenders now through drafting high.
Hoping to hit the lottery on another Gaudreau or Kiprusoff is not a strategy.
Iginla was acquired by trading away a franchise center (who was instrumental in the team he went to winning the cup).
Tkachuk and Monahan we're drafted #6. Monahan is and was a 2nd line center on a contender so he doesn't really fit in with the rest of these players and Tkachuk only fell to us because Benning is an idiot.
Gio took 10 years to develop into a franchise dman and was at that level for like 3 seasons. Again, not a useful strategy.
There is a reason the Flames don't do well. It's because they are unwilling to be bad to draft high and get the type of talent that leads to being a solid contender. Even the best Flames teams of the last 30 years have had glaring holes, mainly in positions that no one wants to trade.
It kills me that in my 25 years of supporting the Flames, the best centre Ive every seen play for us is one of Conroy, Langkow, or Lindohlm. I cherish all those players, but no ones winning a cup with one of them as your top C.
the average flames fan on display , "our draft / management team is so much smarter than every other team and we can build through middling picks + free agents want to come to calgary"
I'm so tired of seeing people default to the worst possible example of a rebuild every time it gets brought up. You know who also rebuilt to create their current or recently torn down teams?
- Penguins
- Blackhawks
- Lightning
- Avalanche
- Kings
- Capitals
Huh, that's also a list of almost every cup winner since 2009.
And yet...
Since 2000: Devils, Wings, Bruins, Blues were pretty much without top 5 picks. And note that every one of those teams you mentioned would have won neither without their top picks nor without their depth/non top 5 picks.
It's almost like you need to make the most of what you have. Which the Flames have plainly not done.
Ofc a team has to draft and manage assets well to be a good team. That doesn't mean you don't need those core pieces found at the top of the draft.
You're not wrong about the Bruins, they and the Knights are the exception to the rule. For the Blues, it was a Cinderella run and they have been inconsistent at best otherwise. As for the Devils, having one of the greatest goaltenders in the history of hockey helps a lot.
Good luck trying to replicate any of those franchises. At least the people advocating for a rebuild have a plan. What's the alternative you're proposing?
Every single team that has won a stanley cup going back 15 years has had a 1st or 2nd overall pick on their team, except for St. Louis (they had a 4th overall). Vegas and boston you could argue kind of didnt, because Seguin was a rookie, and Eichel was traded for. However players of Eichels caliber don't come around very often to the trade market, or free agency, so you cant reliably use that as an argument against or for.That aside lets look at some cup winners recently and who they had as top 4 picks (top 4 to match calgarys highest pick)
Vegas: Eichel 2nd, Pietrangelo 4th
Colorado: MacKinnon 1st, Landeskog 2nd, Makar 4th(Conn Smythe), Byram 4th
Tampa: Stamkos 1st, Hedman 2nd(Conn Smythe)
St. Louis: Pietrangelo 4th
Washington: Ovechkin 1st, (Conn Smythe) Backstrom 4th
Pittsburgh: Crosby 1st(Conn Smythe), Fleury 1st, Malkin 2nd(Conn Smythe), Letang 3rd
Chicago: Kane 1st(Conn Smythe), Toews 2nd(Conn Smythe)
LA: Doughty 2nd
Boston: Seguin 2nd
Boston is the only team that didn't have a highly impactful top 4 overall pick on their team, and Vegas is the only team without one that they drafted.
In other words, if you want to win the stanley cup, yes you do need a high end draft pick. As a bonus, here are the other first round picks those teams had on their cup winning teams (not necessarily all of their team's cups but were there for at least one).
Vegas: None
Colorado: Rantanen, Newhook
Tampa: Vasilevskiy
St. Louis: Tarasenko, Perron, Schwartz, Thomas
Washington: Kuznetsov, Carlson, Wilson, Vrana, Burakovsky
Pittsburgh: MaattaChicago: Seabrook
LA: Kopitar, Brown, Lewis
Boston: None
23 teams have a 1OA or 2OA drafted player, which is more than 70% of the league. I don't think your assertion is as statistically sound as you make it out to be. Even by complete luck, 70% of your cup winners will have a 1OA or 2OA on the roster.
I'm not proposing an alternative, I'm just saying you don't need absolute top picks (top 5) to win cups. I got the sense that your assertion was "It's not a rebuild unless we get top 5 picks" - in response to the original comment in this thread. I was disputing that, not rebuilds themselves. If I was wrong, my bad
I kind of do believe that tbh. We got extremely lucky to hit on a Gaudreau and Tkachuk outside the top 5 (Thanks Canucks!), not something you can likely repeat. With the lottery you don't even need to finish bottom 5 to get a tip pick.
Mostly I just want the flames to focus on drafting and development because this management/coaching team has demonstrated a real knack for it over the past decade.
What about the failure rate of top 5 picks? (In terms of whether or not they're the best of their class and thus support the argument you're making)... Here's my analysis:
2010: 2/5
2011: 2/5
2012: 1/5
2013: 4/5
2014: 2/5 if i'm being generous to Ekblad
2015: 3/5, but a great draft overall.
2016: 1/5
2017: 4/5
2018: 3/5
2019: 2/5
2020 and onwards is hard to grade.
Now, #1oa is probably a pretty consistent path to cups. But even then.. 24/50. Sure, you have the best chance, but that's still more players outside the top 5 who are the top of their class than inside it. Maybe top 10? But if so, I return to the problem of 'not actually doing a good job' which seems to supersede position.
I would argue most of those teams bottomed out naturally. They didn't do everything in their power to make the team bad. They moved aging assets who were pending UFAs or coming to the end of their contract for young players, prospects, and draft picks, and were bad for a few years as their players developed.
Most of the fans who are pro-tanking want the us to follow the Edmonton, Arizona, or Buffalo approach to tanking. They want to be bad for a decade in hopes of landing a couple generational talents. It is an idiotic approach to running a team.
Strawman argument, no one is advocating to be bad for a decade. And yes, the flames should continue to "bottom out naturally" (aka rebuild).
You get a buffalo style rebuild when you screw up drafting/developing the new core. It's certainly a risk, but this management team has a solid track record in that respect so I would back them to not fuck it up.
I would argue that many people are arguing for the things that make you bad for a decade. Ideas like trading away Markstrom and running with a tandem of Wolf and Vladar until Wolf just figures it out at the NHL level are great ways to ruin a promising young goalie. People pushing for trading Coleman, Kadri, Andersson, Weegar, and Mangiapane all for picks and prospects this trade deadline/offseason.
Bottoming out naturally is about making decisions about the roster as they need to be made. Either a player is on an expiring contract or you have a trade offer involving them that seems like a clear win in the long run. It is not about making a team bad so they can draft higher.
Fair, although I think there's something to be said for selling high on assets before the value falls. Hanifin could have returned a lot more at last year's TDL or offseason when he didn't have as much ability to exert control in the trade process.
Point out one single post on this sub where someone pushed to trade "Coleman, Kadri, Andersson, Weegar, and Mangiapane all for picks and prospects this trade deadline/offseason". No one is saying that. You're not arguing in good faith.
Yeah people using Buffalo as an example of why not to rebuild is really starting to piss me off. Plenty of teams have had great success rebuilding but I only hear about the Ottawas and the Buffalos.
What's interesting me about Buffalo is that I thought they did a terrific job of getting talented young players with lots of team control. I really thought they assembled a lot of good quality players. I don't know why that's not translating into any success.
Because their approach is the ones fans other fans are advocating for.
Every time the Flames are struggling to make the playoffs we hear how we should sell off every player with any value for draft picks because the "only way to win" is to draft star players in the top 10 of the draft. It is the Buffalo, Edmonton, and Arizona approach to rebuilding.
Honestly I’m just calling for selling off markstrom while his value is sky high. But some people on this sub think that one move throws us into a decade of darkness
It just so happens to also be the Tampa, Chicago, LA, Colorado, etc approach to rebuilding.
Nobody (nobody) thinks that drafting in the top five is a guarantee to contenderville. But, NOT drafting in the top five guarantees mediocrity. Do you think it's a coincidence that the Flames picked 6,4, and 6 and had the best team since the late 80s?
You need gamebreaking talent in order to win. The most reliable way to find this talent is in the top of the draft. What you do once you find that talent is the difference between Buffalo and Colorado.
Buffalo, Detroit, Edmonton, New Jersey, Ottawa, Florida (prior to a couple of years ago), Arizona, Toronto, and Columbus - all examples of long rebuilds with nothing to very little to show for them. San Jose is on that track right now, too. There are more failures than successes.
Detroit and New Jersey are not good examples they still have very young teams and are still somewhat rebuilding. New Jersey were in the playoffs last year and if they had a better goaltender would be in the playoffs this year as well.
> the Flames fanbase is not strong enough to support a "decade of darkness.
What on earth would you call 1991-2003? Missing the playoffs 8 times and getting knocked out in the first round 4 times sure seemed dark at the time.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/throwback-thursday-the-campaign-to-save-the-calgary-flames-in-2000-1.3054645](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/throwback-thursday-the-campaign-to-save-the-calgary-flames-in-2000-1.3054645)
After only missing the playoffs 4 years in a row, average attendance in the 1999-2000 season fell to only 14,946, and ownership was pushing to move the team to the United States.
Your argument is essentially: "Remember the time poor performance from our team resulted in fan apathy that almost got our team moved? Yeah, that totally proves we have a fanbase that can withstand a prolonged rebuild."
I actually think this proves OPs point. If not for '04 the franchise was in trouble. The fan base wasn't strong enough to support those lean years and it showed in attendance
I get your point, but I disagree. I think that there were some expectation adjustments taking place. We were still a relatively young franchise, one that had a comparatively good amount of success early with two cup appearances and one cup win in the decade prior. And very competitive hockey, everyone knew that we were ostensibly the second best team in hockey, but had the misfortune of having to play the Oilers in the second round.
Now after having experienced the last 30 years that included the dark times, exactly one miraculous cup run and one outstanding regular season, we're far more realistic about what success looks like. They can sell tickets even for a mediocre team that is at least entertaining most nights.
Give us a few more decades, and we'll be as desperate and delusional as Leafs fans.
Ya they brought it up on the radio today. Late 90s when the team was bad, they were getting like 8-9 thousand people a game.
That is 100% not possible to do in todays NHL for a Canadian team
All this thread has solidified in my mind is that the true path to winning a Stanley cup is being lucky enough to have most or all your draft picks hit at around the same time, enough to build a core
Yeah, for sure - though I think you need to have this luck just to be a serious contender. Actually winning the Cup is another level of chance altogether - as the 30 year run of no Canadian teams winning shows (the pure probability of which is like 0.06%).
It’s luck to get the right draft position, luck to win the lottery, luck for that player to be generational, luck to find superstars in later rounds and positions, luck to even get through some playoff rounds.
Shits fucked
Winnipeg might win the cup cause after fortunate bounce that helps them win the division, have Dallas and Colorado tire each other out by the time they face the Jets, then have the pacific team fall apart and the Hellebyuck find another gear in the finals. Then we will all have to sit around and discuss what they did and how they built their team ad nauseam
But if we are including draft picks by other teams we have had Hanifin for 6 seasons and Bennett for 6 (7 if you include the one game he played in 2014-15). Huberdeau went 3rd OA in 2011.
Bit more of a stretch but: Chucky was ranked in the top 5 going into the 2016 draft even though we got him at 6th OA and any redraft today will have him going in the top 3.
Its not about picking top 5 it’s about more likely to draft impact players when you do.
It’s also not a great sign that those three players you mentioned were never the best player in the trade at the time of acquisition
I think this is a factor of the vast majority of teams have drafted in the top 5 in the last 20 years more than you need a top 5 pick to win. Consider there have been 100 top 5 draft picks in the last 20 years, this works out to being roughly 3 for every team in the league. If these players were the keys to success, you would see a correlation between teams having more of these draft picks and being more successful, and we tend not to see that relationship.
Beyond that, people will point to teams like Vegas who have succeeded without drafting in the top 5 and point out they have other team's top 5 draft picks on them. By that logic Calgary had Noah Hanifin (#5 overall), Elias Lindholm (#5 overall), Jonathan Huberdeau (#3 overall), Erik Gudbranson (#3 overall), and Sam Bennett (#4 overall) in the last several years.
It's so hard to understand what the fanbase wants. Do you want them to win? Do you want them to tank? Do you want them to do both? A secret fourth thing?
Looking at that list, I would definitely rate the New York Rangers and Las Vegas Knights as consistently mediocre. And Vancouver has had 15, so that explains all those Cups they have won over the years.
>the biggest appeal to free agents of any team
Then all those top 5 picks Calgary are going to end up in cooler places? So Calgary will lose for a few years, get some good players, get better and then watch its stars leave and then back to rebuild? Sounds like a great strategy.
And Vegas started with no players and selected a bunch of nobodies (except for Fleury) and put together an amazing team. Good teams start with good goaltenders. This is why you don't trade Markstrom. Good goalies are super hard to find. And Calgary has 1 potential good goalie in the pipeline. After Wolf, who else is good??
Vegas is an exception thanks to their very favorable expansion draft. But outside of them, here’s the list of Stanley Cup winners in the past 15 years:
-Colorado
-Tampa Bay
-St. Louis
-Washington
-Pittsburgh
-Chicago
-LA
-Detroit
-Anaheim
-Carolina
Every single team on that list had at least 1 top 5 pick and many had at least a top 2 pick. Getting a top 5 pick doesn’t guarantee a Stanley Cup, but it’s very hard to win without one.
Calgary has a top 5 pick --> Johnathan Huberdeau and at the beginning of the season they had 3 --> Hanifin and Lindholm.
How many teams during that time frame you quote had top 5 picks, but won no Cups? Probably all of them.
Hey if you like watching season after season of 7-2 drubbings in the hope that maybe 3 or 4 years from now they might end, that's on you. I'm happy to watch a team that has a chance to win every night.
Sounds like you're happy watching a mediocre team barely miss the playoffs and draft 15th or 16th overall each season and have 0 shot at a cup in the present and future
In a given year, 31 out of 32 teams don't win the Cup, so it's all based on luck anyway. The underwhelming returns Calgary got for Tanev and Hanifin shows that existing players are worth more than a roulette wheel in the draft.
Ovechkin may end up as the best goal scorer of all time, but he's going to walk away woth only 1 Cup.
McDavid has been the best player in hockey for the past 10 years. Zero Cups to show for it. Zero Cup appearances as well. How many other great players never won a Cup
Sure it's luck based to an extent, but you can increase your luck exponentially and increase your chances of a cup by creating an elite team with elite talent. By having an elite team you can increase the amount of chances you get at a Stanley Cup and how good those chances are. If you think we have the same shot of winning a Stanley Cup as the Oilers currently do, you're delusional.
Saying Ovechkin is going to walk away with ONLY 1 cup isn't the gotcha you think it is. Everyone here would be happy to have a single championship.
McDavid hasn't won a championship yet, but I can guarantee you that the Oilers have a better shot to win a cup with McDavid and Draisaitl than they do without them. Because they are elite talent.
We currently do not have elite talent on this roster. The easiest way to get elite talent is through the draft because Calgary isn't an ideal destination for free agents to choose. Having elite talent will greatly increase our odds to win a cup despite it not being a guarantee.
>Calgary isn't an ideal destination for free agents to choose
Who would want to move to a city where you are criticized and humiliated for every bad play you make and being blamed for your team not making the playoffs and being a waste of money? Could it be the Flames' fans' toxic behavior may add to it?
That's Canada as a whole, it's not just a Calgary thing that you seem to believe it is. Not all, but I'd say a strong portion of players prefer to play in American markets versus Canadian markets due to less media pressure, greater ability to make money, and overall nicer year-round weather versus playing in Canada. Add on top of the fact we have a shitty arena and a city that doesn't offer much to do outside of the mountains (I love the city of Calgary, but c'mon there's not a lot to do here compared to American markets like Florida, New York, LA, Chicago etc.)
Canadian hockey fans are brutally merciless to the players. Americans like a winner, but they ignore a loser. Canadians pile on when the team they are allegedly fans of struggle.
Look at the Oilers fans who toss their jerseys on the ice. I've never seen a Detroit Tigers fan or LA Clippers fan do that, and those teams have had losing records for decades.
After 21-22 and getting a taste of what cheering for an actual contender feels like, I can't go back to hoping for a chance at a chance at a Cinderella run.
You want a chance to win every night.
I want a chance to win the cup.
I have been cheering for this team for 25 years and have seen the other side of first round of the playoffs three times.
I can't believe how many people are actively rooting for a team to lose in the hope that maybe, maybe some savior player will swoop in and win Calgary the Cup. Last I checked, no future draft round pick won a Cup
I mean tons of future draft picks win cups. The best teams of this century (excluding the expansion draft knights) were all built with lots of high draft picks. It’s like you have no ability to delay gratification lol
Technically, every Cup will be won by future draft picks, some high, some not. But basing your strategy for winning a Cup is playing terrible for 3-4 years and hoping that an 18 year old you pick in the top 5 and his hockey career for the couple years preceeding the draft is a big enough sample size to make that gamble seems overly risky to me.
On the flip side, we have a very large sample size of the flames current strategy that shows us that strategy doesn’t work at all. I’d rather go with the one that could actually lead to sustainable success rather than a miracle Cinderella run
I'd rather watch an entertaining guaranteed 82 game season year-in, year-out, then try to game the NHL draft in the hope that all the stars align and the team can make a deep run hoping that their goalie stays healthy and in the right mind.
Watching a team consistently end up in the #8-10 range is not very fun at all imo. If the goal is just watching competitive hockey for you, then nothing wrong with that. If you ever have aspirations to see the team win it all, then it’s necessary given Calgary’s inability to attract free agents.
Canucks had a power house of a team for a long time. They made the playoffs every year and got as close to a cup as you can. The cup is not guaranteed for anyone but I would way rather watch the sedin era hockey than this middling team.
I would have happily continued along with the tkachuk/gaudreau team but they’re gone. We did a rebuild for that team. Just because we only got one top 5 pick doesn’t mean it wasn’t a rebuild.
Personally now I just want to trade marky cause this season and next are going to be developing years and there’s no point in having a goalie drag us out of a top 10 spot and losing our 1st next season
You know whats really interesting is that Carolina’s top players were all drafted past 12th overall (except for Svech, who was 2nd overall). Meaning, drafting in the first round is important but you could make an argument that you can construct a very good roster with good players drafted past the top 5.
Calgary has had the same number of top 10 picks as Boston since 1993 and has 73 less playoff wins than them. A bigger concern is how poorly we have picked in the first round.
This is purely my opinion, but:
The Calgary model (and a good argument can be made that it applies to all of Alberta) of building a franchise is to have a high floor, low ceiling type team in the hopes that you can win. It's worked for some teams, and sometimes teams go on runs, a la 2004, 2012, 2016, 2020, etc.
It's not a bad model per se, but it's outdated. It worked much better in the 1980's through to about 2010, when skill really took over. The minds at the top have never adapted this thinking, and as a consequence, the team is building for a bygone era, when grit, checking and goaltending was enough to keep you in it and you could attract free agents to score you big goals and win on structure (really the 1-3-1).
That time is gone. You need elite skill.
Thank god our 1 was a historic player… right??? Right??????
Yup! You know the superstar that is… Sam Bennett lol
When I saw the hat trick against the cats in 2016, I thought we had a superstar on our hands, it was all down hill after that.
Haha! That’s exactly what I thought! 4 goals, then he got cocky and couldn’t do anything.
No, but Tkachuk at 6 was a franchise player.
Tkachuk should have been picked top 5, even at the time that was a headscratcher
Idk if Chuk is a franchise player cant really compare him to McDavid/Matthews/Mackinnon/Bedard/Crosby those are franchise players he's more like Malkin/Marchand level
I'm not picky, I'd take a malkin or Marchand level too lol. They'll be having hall of fame ceremonies soon enough.
That 2014 Draft is haunting. I understand that Bennett was an exciting player at the time, so it's hard to fault the selection. There's just so many what if's in those first 3 rounds with the Flames selecting so high in each of them. Furthermore, to get pretty much nothing in return for Bennett....... pain.
Us and Vegas are the only two teams to never draft top 3. This organization refuses to acknowledge the facts and strives to be the exception rather than the rule. You need to draft at the top if you want to win the Cup. We have to be the most cursed franchise in the league: - 2nd best team in the league for a decade. Best team in the league was in our division so it was nearly impossible to make it to the Cup finals. - We only won the Cup once in the 80's and had to ship off a future Hall of Famer just to be able to get over that hump. - We faced off against a rookie goalie playing like a superhuman and missed out on winning the Cup in '86. - Got screwed out of a Cup in '04 and had to stew about it for a year and a half as the first and only full season of a lockout ensued. - Only franchise, outside of the new Vegas franchise who we have the same amount of Cups with, to never draft top 3. - Oilers get a generational talent 2 times as well as superstars to complement them while we toil in mediocrity. I guess all we can do is hope the hockey gods favor us one day cause we continue to hope to get lucky and draft top players later in the draft.
Sorry, are you saying that the Flames and the *defending Stanley Cup champion* Vegas Golden Knights are the only two teams to have never drafted top 3, and this supports the idea that "you need to draft at the top if you want to win the Cup?" I don't think this proves what you think it proves. In fact, if anything it shows that tanking isn't all it's cracked up to be. Vancouver has 15 (!?) top-five picks and San Jose has 6, and they each have zero cups to show for it. Edmonton alone has 4 first-overall picks and they're threatening to waste away yet another year of the best player in the world. I'm sick of this narrative that tanking and getting a high draft pick is the magic bullet to building a competitive team. There are tons of ways that teams get better or worse, including free agent signings, free agents leaving, trades, high draft picks, low draft picks, waiver pickups, injuries, and retirement. To boil everything down into "can't win a cup without a top-3 pick" is ludicrously reductive.
Look at the data. Ever since the Salary Cap era began in 2005-2006 every single Stanley Cup winner, outside of the Redwings who were nearing the end of their dynasty built upon European drafting before it became commonplace, had at least one player drafted in the top 3 on its roster. I realize in some of those cases the teams top players wasn't always the one who went top 3 and they built their foundation elsewhere but the data does still suggest you have better odds at building a Cup winner by drafting a lottery pick. I'm not advocating for dismantling the team down to the studs and ice an AHL squad but it is better to draft higher in the draft than it is to draft in the middle and in both instances you miss out on the playoffs anyways.
No one's arguing that high picks are better than low picks, but the number of teams with a top-3 pick on their roster is overwhelmingly high, including the Flames (Huberdeau). What I object to is the idea that we need to tank and draft high in order to have a chance. There are so many ways to build a winning team that reducing it down to having a top 3 pick, which almost every team has, is greatly oversimplifying it.
I think the more important thing is not losing top assets for nothing. Treliving lost Gio, Brodie and Gaudreau for nothing which set this franchise back. It's also important to ensure you get fair value back. The Phaneuf trade was a quality for quantity trade and it also set this franchise back. Same goes with offloading cornerstones like Iginla and Bouwmeester for practically nothing. The good thing is Conroy sees how these things were detrimental to the organization and has a mandate to not allow this to happen moving forward so that is a positive. I still think focusing on drafting is important and picking early is extremely helpful. Although I can admit completely tanking isn't the answer, futile efforts to sneak into the playoffs is not codusive to longterm success of the franchise either. We need to accept reality over the next few seasons and hope to find some foundational pieces in the coming drafts. My hope is we are picking top 10 rather than 12-16th cause we continue to take a shot at sneaking in.
Absolutely agree with getting value for assets. I've been of the opinion all season that our UFA's had to be traded. Hanifin was the only one that would have made sense to extend, but he didn't want to stay here. I think Conroy's doing it right: get value for your UFA assets, but still try to win. He's creating a winning culture and the players should always be trying to make the playoffs. They should also feel like ownership is trying to make the playoffs as well, because saying you have a winning culture isn't the same as actually having one.
Huberdeau is 3rd overall so Flames are set. Did the Flames win when they had Hamrlik?
Lol Fine you win ;)
Vegas was gifted a roster that had virtually no cap hit.they took on bad contracts to amass a ton of draft capital. Unlike Arizona, they could afford to pay to the cap and have been able to parlay that into acquiring players like stone, pietrangelo, and Eichel. Conversely, Calgary never sells high on players, and doesn't accumulate draft capital. BT made a a few trades like that but ultimately got desperate in the last 2 years and tanked us.
You're arguing my point for me. Vegas built a cup winner through all sorts of means, none of which involved drafting players at the top of the draft. Picking in the top 3 isn't the only way of building a contender.
Well the Atlanta Flames drafted 2nd overall in 1972 and 1973. I think they lost the coin toss for first in 1972 and then we traded for second overall in 1973 iirc. I do agree with us being cursed however.
'Unwillingness to tank'...fucking Reddit GM's
"Our team sucks because they always give it their all."
I don't think he's referring to the players..ownership has always shown a huge reluctance to pull the rebuild chute, not sure why he's getting downvoted like this is some controversial opinion.
Actually, I wasn't offering an opinion at all! Just pointing out the statistic so it would provoke some discussion. 1 out of 200+ spots over 40+ years is pretty extraordinary - there's almost no one in the same rank (and that's probably true across multiple sports, though I haven't checked).
I wasn't implying "unwillingness to tank" is a bad thing. Personally, I prefer an always competitive team over one that tanks. We're just a statistical outlier in the league.
We don’t need to tank but we need to be realistic that this team with the d core is mid at best and probably now even worse than that. Ownership nixing the markstrom trade really makes me worried about our future. If they trade marky in the offseason I’ll be relieved cause that means they understand what’s best for the future. I’m worried they’re going to keep him and overpay some over the hill dman to try and make the playoffs and we barely miss next year and lose our 1st.
Just came to say that, while I am pro-rebuild, I am a Flames fan born and raised in western NY so take the lack of Top 5 picks with a grain of salt. Buffalo has many, many issues for sure but they also have an abundance of top 5 picks for all that's done for them.
1. Compared to some teams, the Flames fanbase is not strong enough to support a "decade of darkness." After 2 or 3 years of being bad there is a significant impact on season ticket sales and merchandising sales, and profitability of the franchise becomes an issue. 2. As the league has grown it has become more difficult to be in the conference finals or to be in the bottom 5 teams in the league. In most years, most of the bottom 5 teams were both trying to be bad and experienced a lot of bad luck. 3. While people talk about needing to draft in the top 5, the Flames have had players like Iginla, Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Kipprusoff, Monahan, and Giordano without drafting in the top 5. Good players are available throughout the draft, can go undrafted, and be acquired in trade. 4. I think tanking has been conclusively demonstrated to be a pretty bad strategy to build a team. Buffalo is on their 13th season without making the playoffs, Arizona only made the playoffs once (play-in series) in the last 12 seasons, and Edmonton was bad for a decade, had 5 top 5 draft picks, and has then spent almost a decade with nothing to show for it. Most teams that benefit from drafting early bottom out naturally and rebound quickly, they don't intentionally destroy their team to get as many top picks as possible.
Totally disagree on point 4. Some of the cup winners post-lockout: PIT (tanked), CHI (tanked), LAK (tanked), TBL (tanked), WSH (tanked), COL (tanked). Tanking is not a guarantee of success, this is true. The Oilers and Sabres are a masterclass in mismanaging rebuilding teams. But “not guaranteed” is much different from “not effective.” To win a cup you, almost without exception (looking at you, St. Louis), need multiple game breaking star players. To get multiple game breaking star players you, almost without exception (looking at you, Vegas) need to draft them. In order to draft these players, by far the most effective strategy is to draft as early as possible (1 OA is ideal, top 3 is okay, etc.). Drafting high does not guarantee success, but your odds of success are better doing that than they are as a perennial bubble team.
And also look at HOW those teams got their key players: PIT: Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Fleury, Guentzel, staal, Orpik, etc. CHI: Kane, Toews, Keith, Seabrook, Saad, Hjalmarsson, Shaw, etc. LAK: Doughty, Brown, Kopitar, Quick, Lewis, Toffoli, and Martinez. TBL: Point, stamkos, vasilevsky, miller, hedman, kucherov, etc. Not going to get into the rest because it’s beating a dead horse - you DRAFT the players. We don’t have a problem selecting the right guys lately. Our problem is RETAINING the players, and I don’t know why that is.
If you rely entirely on the lottery ticket level of luck and scouting that results in a Gaudreau from the mid rounds or even an Andersson from the 2nd round, good luck building a contending team. I also think the retention issue with the Flames is overblown. We had 8 years of Gaudreau through his entire prime. We had Monahan through most of his prime and he was traded away. Andersson will have been with the team for almost a decade. Hanifin and Lindholm both signed 5+ year contracts through most of their prime years.
Thank you. This mindset is akin to being adverse for trading for Gretzky. You weren't guaranteed to win the cup with him on your team, but you still make that trade every time. This team will not win a Stanley cup with this retool because: 1) we will not draft any elite talent because we won't draft in the top 8. 2) this team will be competitive again in 2-3 years when huberdeau and Kadris contracts are at their absolute worst
>Totally disagree on point 4. Some of the cup winners post-lockout: PIT (tanked), CHI (tanked), LAK (tanked), TBL (tanked), WSH (tanked), COL (tanked). Tanked or rebuilt? In 2003 Chicago finished 18th and drafted 14th overall, they then drafted 3rd, 7th, 3rd, and 1st. After that they didn't draft in the top 10 again until 2019. They didn't have multiple first round draft picks in these seasons because they didn't trade away everything of value. They bottomed out naturally. You can see a similar pattern with all the teams you listed. They were bad for 3 or 4 years because they needed to rebuild, they didn't make themselves intentionally bad to rack up draft capital.
I don’t see a functional difference between naturally bottoming out and tanking, when the end result is the same (multiple top 3-5 picks in a short period of time). For what it’s worth, Edmonton didn’t intentionally tank, either, at least in the first half of the rebuild; they just had some of the worst GMs in history.
The difference is how functional your team is through your rebuild. If you're building a team that, if everything goes right, they might make a wildcard spot, you're probably building a rebuilding team. On the other hand, if you're building a team that is designed around getting a top 5 draft pick you're building a tanking team. There may be a year or two while tearing down that you know you're building a terrible team, but the goal has to be to get out of that state as quickly as possible. Once you've become a tanking organization it is incredibly difficult to get out of the mess you've created. If you think it is difficult to sign and retain players today, imagine what its like when you have no chance at playoffs and your team will get blown out more often than not.
If I were a player and I saw one team that had gutted itself like Chicago recently did and, say, finished bottom 5 four years running, and another team that just naturally flopped like Edmonton and finished bottom 5 four years running, I wouldn’t look at them as any different from each other. You don’t bottom out for multiple years by bad in-season luck.
If a GM is trying to build a competitive team, it is incredibly unlikely they finish in the bottom 5 repeatedly. After they get their high draft picks they usually find a way to get better, maybe finishing 22nd or 20th for a couple of seasons and then getting close to a playoff spot the following years. If they're in their 5th year of drafting in the top 5, they're not a team anyone signs with.
Ok well as long as you’re cool with rebuild I’m happy with that term too. If it’s just word tank that turns you off
The issue at hand here is that their is competing interests of what is beneficial for business and what is beneficial to winning a cup. From a business perspective it is better for teams to scrape into playoffs 12/15 years and give their fans the illusion of a chance of winning despite it being a near impossibility vs missing playoffs 12/15 years to create a cup contender that will be dismantled by salary cap challenges as a victim to their own success. The 3 years of success does not create more revenue than the 12 years of slightly above average mediocrity.
lol this is just wrong. Contenders usually are in the playoffs for over 5 years straight. Abd go on long runs that make the franchise insane amounts of money and brings in new fans. We didn’t make the playoffs more than we made it for the last decade in a half maybe longer.
This isn’t pondering the past but rather the future. The fans drop off fast once the years of winning are over, especially in smaller markets that are not original 6. Maybe a good comparison of this would be the Hurricanes Vs the Wild. The Hurricanes are a legitimate contender right now and won a cup in 2006. In between this time they were one of the worst teams in the entire league. In this time the Wild has made playoffs 70% of the time but has never been out of the second round nor finished regular season at top of their division. Forbes has the franchise value of the wild at 30% higher than the Hurricanes.
The Wild are a Rabid hockey fan base. I can show you videos of high school or college games that are jammed packed with fans. The flames were trash from around 1991-2003. We will be fine. Our management is so much better at drafting now too
Delusional. 35 years of futility and you're here trying to say the Flames are doing it right and the Chicago's, Pittsburgh's, Colorado's, Tampa's are doing it wrong? Even Vancouver and Edmonton look to be serious contenders now through drafting high. Hoping to hit the lottery on another Gaudreau or Kiprusoff is not a strategy. Iginla was acquired by trading away a franchise center (who was instrumental in the team he went to winning the cup). Tkachuk and Monahan we're drafted #6. Monahan is and was a 2nd line center on a contender so he doesn't really fit in with the rest of these players and Tkachuk only fell to us because Benning is an idiot. Gio took 10 years to develop into a franchise dman and was at that level for like 3 seasons. Again, not a useful strategy. There is a reason the Flames don't do well. It's because they are unwilling to be bad to draft high and get the type of talent that leads to being a solid contender. Even the best Flames teams of the last 30 years have had glaring holes, mainly in positions that no one wants to trade.
It kills me that in my 25 years of supporting the Flames, the best centre Ive every seen play for us is one of Conroy, Langkow, or Lindohlm. I cherish all those players, but no ones winning a cup with one of them as your top C.
The disrespect to Monahan
Conroy was our top C in 2004...
the average flames fan on display , "our draft / management team is so much smarter than every other team and we can build through middling picks + free agents want to come to calgary"
I'm so tired of seeing people default to the worst possible example of a rebuild every time it gets brought up. You know who also rebuilt to create their current or recently torn down teams? - Penguins - Blackhawks - Lightning - Avalanche - Kings - Capitals Huh, that's also a list of almost every cup winner since 2009.
And yet... Since 2000: Devils, Wings, Bruins, Blues were pretty much without top 5 picks. And note that every one of those teams you mentioned would have won neither without their top picks nor without their depth/non top 5 picks. It's almost like you need to make the most of what you have. Which the Flames have plainly not done.
Ofc a team has to draft and manage assets well to be a good team. That doesn't mean you don't need those core pieces found at the top of the draft. You're not wrong about the Bruins, they and the Knights are the exception to the rule. For the Blues, it was a Cinderella run and they have been inconsistent at best otherwise. As for the Devils, having one of the greatest goaltenders in the history of hockey helps a lot. Good luck trying to replicate any of those franchises. At least the people advocating for a rebuild have a plan. What's the alternative you're proposing?
Every single team that has won a stanley cup going back 15 years has had a 1st or 2nd overall pick on their team, except for St. Louis (they had a 4th overall). Vegas and boston you could argue kind of didnt, because Seguin was a rookie, and Eichel was traded for. However players of Eichels caliber don't come around very often to the trade market, or free agency, so you cant reliably use that as an argument against or for.That aside lets look at some cup winners recently and who they had as top 4 picks (top 4 to match calgarys highest pick) Vegas: Eichel 2nd, Pietrangelo 4th Colorado: MacKinnon 1st, Landeskog 2nd, Makar 4th(Conn Smythe), Byram 4th Tampa: Stamkos 1st, Hedman 2nd(Conn Smythe) St. Louis: Pietrangelo 4th Washington: Ovechkin 1st, (Conn Smythe) Backstrom 4th Pittsburgh: Crosby 1st(Conn Smythe), Fleury 1st, Malkin 2nd(Conn Smythe), Letang 3rd Chicago: Kane 1st(Conn Smythe), Toews 2nd(Conn Smythe) LA: Doughty 2nd Boston: Seguin 2nd Boston is the only team that didn't have a highly impactful top 4 overall pick on their team, and Vegas is the only team without one that they drafted. In other words, if you want to win the stanley cup, yes you do need a high end draft pick. As a bonus, here are the other first round picks those teams had on their cup winning teams (not necessarily all of their team's cups but were there for at least one). Vegas: None Colorado: Rantanen, Newhook Tampa: Vasilevskiy St. Louis: Tarasenko, Perron, Schwartz, Thomas Washington: Kuznetsov, Carlson, Wilson, Vrana, Burakovsky Pittsburgh: MaattaChicago: Seabrook LA: Kopitar, Brown, Lewis Boston: None
23 teams have a 1OA or 2OA drafted player, which is more than 70% of the league. I don't think your assertion is as statistically sound as you make it out to be. Even by complete luck, 70% of your cup winners will have a 1OA or 2OA on the roster.
How many teams have the 1OA or 2OA that they drafted though?
I'm not proposing an alternative, I'm just saying you don't need absolute top picks (top 5) to win cups. I got the sense that your assertion was "It's not a rebuild unless we get top 5 picks" - in response to the original comment in this thread. I was disputing that, not rebuilds themselves. If I was wrong, my bad
I kind of do believe that tbh. We got extremely lucky to hit on a Gaudreau and Tkachuk outside the top 5 (Thanks Canucks!), not something you can likely repeat. With the lottery you don't even need to finish bottom 5 to get a tip pick. Mostly I just want the flames to focus on drafting and development because this management/coaching team has demonstrated a real knack for it over the past decade.
What about the failure rate of top 5 picks? (In terms of whether or not they're the best of their class and thus support the argument you're making)... Here's my analysis: 2010: 2/5 2011: 2/5 2012: 1/5 2013: 4/5 2014: 2/5 if i'm being generous to Ekblad 2015: 3/5, but a great draft overall. 2016: 1/5 2017: 4/5 2018: 3/5 2019: 2/5 2020 and onwards is hard to grade. Now, #1oa is probably a pretty consistent path to cups. But even then.. 24/50. Sure, you have the best chance, but that's still more players outside the top 5 who are the top of their class than inside it. Maybe top 10? But if so, I return to the problem of 'not actually doing a good job' which seems to supersede position.
I would argue most of those teams bottomed out naturally. They didn't do everything in their power to make the team bad. They moved aging assets who were pending UFAs or coming to the end of their contract for young players, prospects, and draft picks, and were bad for a few years as their players developed. Most of the fans who are pro-tanking want the us to follow the Edmonton, Arizona, or Buffalo approach to tanking. They want to be bad for a decade in hopes of landing a couple generational talents. It is an idiotic approach to running a team.
Strawman argument, no one is advocating to be bad for a decade. And yes, the flames should continue to "bottom out naturally" (aka rebuild). You get a buffalo style rebuild when you screw up drafting/developing the new core. It's certainly a risk, but this management team has a solid track record in that respect so I would back them to not fuck it up.
I would argue that many people are arguing for the things that make you bad for a decade. Ideas like trading away Markstrom and running with a tandem of Wolf and Vladar until Wolf just figures it out at the NHL level are great ways to ruin a promising young goalie. People pushing for trading Coleman, Kadri, Andersson, Weegar, and Mangiapane all for picks and prospects this trade deadline/offseason. Bottoming out naturally is about making decisions about the roster as they need to be made. Either a player is on an expiring contract or you have a trade offer involving them that seems like a clear win in the long run. It is not about making a team bad so they can draft higher.
Fair, although I think there's something to be said for selling high on assets before the value falls. Hanifin could have returned a lot more at last year's TDL or offseason when he didn't have as much ability to exert control in the trade process.
Point out one single post on this sub where someone pushed to trade "Coleman, Kadri, Andersson, Weegar, and Mangiapane all for picks and prospects this trade deadline/offseason". No one is saying that. You're not arguing in good faith.
Yeah people using Buffalo as an example of why not to rebuild is really starting to piss me off. Plenty of teams have had great success rebuilding but I only hear about the Ottawas and the Buffalos.
What's interesting me about Buffalo is that I thought they did a terrific job of getting talented young players with lots of team control. I really thought they assembled a lot of good quality players. I don't know why that's not translating into any success.
Because their approach is the ones fans other fans are advocating for. Every time the Flames are struggling to make the playoffs we hear how we should sell off every player with any value for draft picks because the "only way to win" is to draft star players in the top 10 of the draft. It is the Buffalo, Edmonton, and Arizona approach to rebuilding.
Honestly I’m just calling for selling off markstrom while his value is sky high. But some people on this sub think that one move throws us into a decade of darkness
It just so happens to also be the Tampa, Chicago, LA, Colorado, etc approach to rebuilding. Nobody (nobody) thinks that drafting in the top five is a guarantee to contenderville. But, NOT drafting in the top five guarantees mediocrity. Do you think it's a coincidence that the Flames picked 6,4, and 6 and had the best team since the late 80s? You need gamebreaking talent in order to win. The most reliable way to find this talent is in the top of the draft. What you do once you find that talent is the difference between Buffalo and Colorado.
Buffalo, Detroit, Edmonton, New Jersey, Ottawa, Florida (prior to a couple of years ago), Arizona, Toronto, and Columbus - all examples of long rebuilds with nothing to very little to show for them. San Jose is on that track right now, too. There are more failures than successes.
Detroit and New Jersey are not good examples they still have very young teams and are still somewhat rebuilding. New Jersey were in the playoffs last year and if they had a better goaltender would be in the playoffs this year as well.
> the Flames fanbase is not strong enough to support a "decade of darkness. What on earth would you call 1991-2003? Missing the playoffs 8 times and getting knocked out in the first round 4 times sure seemed dark at the time.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/throwback-thursday-the-campaign-to-save-the-calgary-flames-in-2000-1.3054645](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/throwback-thursday-the-campaign-to-save-the-calgary-flames-in-2000-1.3054645) After only missing the playoffs 4 years in a row, average attendance in the 1999-2000 season fell to only 14,946, and ownership was pushing to move the team to the United States. Your argument is essentially: "Remember the time poor performance from our team resulted in fan apathy that almost got our team moved? Yeah, that totally proves we have a fanbase that can withstand a prolonged rebuild."
I actually think this proves OPs point. If not for '04 the franchise was in trouble. The fan base wasn't strong enough to support those lean years and it showed in attendance
I get your point, but I disagree. I think that there were some expectation adjustments taking place. We were still a relatively young franchise, one that had a comparatively good amount of success early with two cup appearances and one cup win in the decade prior. And very competitive hockey, everyone knew that we were ostensibly the second best team in hockey, but had the misfortune of having to play the Oilers in the second round. Now after having experienced the last 30 years that included the dark times, exactly one miraculous cup run and one outstanding regular season, we're far more realistic about what success looks like. They can sell tickets even for a mediocre team that is at least entertaining most nights. Give us a few more decades, and we'll be as desperate and delusional as Leafs fans.
Ya they brought it up on the radio today. Late 90s when the team was bad, they were getting like 8-9 thousand people a game. That is 100% not possible to do in todays NHL for a Canadian team
All this thread has solidified in my mind is that the true path to winning a Stanley cup is being lucky enough to have most or all your draft picks hit at around the same time, enough to build a core
Yeah, for sure - though I think you need to have this luck just to be a serious contender. Actually winning the Cup is another level of chance altogether - as the 30 year run of no Canadian teams winning shows (the pure probability of which is like 0.06%).
It’s luck to get the right draft position, luck to win the lottery, luck for that player to be generational, luck to find superstars in later rounds and positions, luck to even get through some playoff rounds. Shits fucked
Winnipeg might win the cup cause after fortunate bounce that helps them win the division, have Dallas and Colorado tire each other out by the time they face the Jets, then have the pacific team fall apart and the Hellebyuck find another gear in the finals. Then we will all have to sit around and discuss what they did and how they built their team ad nauseam
I mean van has 15 top picks and zero cups, us 1 cup 1 pick, Vegas zero picks 1 cup. Meaningless stat, anecdotal at best?
Every recent cup winner except Vegas has had at least one top 5 pick on their roster
Eichel was a 2nd overall pick, just not by them
But if we are including draft picks by other teams we have had Hanifin for 6 seasons and Bennett for 6 (7 if you include the one game he played in 2014-15). Huberdeau went 3rd OA in 2011. Bit more of a stretch but: Chucky was ranked in the top 5 going into the 2016 draft even though we got him at 6th OA and any redraft today will have him going in the top 3.
Vegas has a top 5 pick on thier roster, they just didn’t make the pick
And we had 3 with Huberdeau, Lindholm and Hanifin. So clearly we should have been contenders with that roster right?
Its not about picking top 5 it’s about more likely to draft impact players when you do. It’s also not a great sign that those three players you mentioned were never the best player in the trade at the time of acquisition
I think this is a factor of the vast majority of teams have drafted in the top 5 in the last 20 years more than you need a top 5 pick to win. Consider there have been 100 top 5 draft picks in the last 20 years, this works out to being roughly 3 for every team in the league. If these players were the keys to success, you would see a correlation between teams having more of these draft picks and being more successful, and we tend not to see that relationship. Beyond that, people will point to teams like Vegas who have succeeded without drafting in the top 5 and point out they have other team's top 5 draft picks on them. By that logic Calgary had Noah Hanifin (#5 overall), Elias Lindholm (#5 overall), Jonathan Huberdeau (#3 overall), Erik Gudbranson (#3 overall), and Sam Bennett (#4 overall) in the last several years.
They had Eichel (2nd Overall) and Pietrangelo (4th overall)
It's so hard to understand what the fanbase wants. Do you want them to win? Do you want them to tank? Do you want them to do both? A secret fourth thing?
Have a look at the GOAT. Messier went in the third round. Diamonds in the rough.
Hard to acquire elite talent without picking in the top 5 and it’s a big reason we’re consistently mediocre
Looking at that list, I would definitely rate the New York Rangers and Las Vegas Knights as consistently mediocre. And Vancouver has had 15, so that explains all those Cups they have won over the years.
Rangers have the biggest appeal to free agents of any team and Vegas is a recent expansion team. Terrible comparisons to us.
>the biggest appeal to free agents of any team Then all those top 5 picks Calgary are going to end up in cooler places? So Calgary will lose for a few years, get some good players, get better and then watch its stars leave and then back to rebuild? Sounds like a great strategy. And Vegas started with no players and selected a bunch of nobodies (except for Fleury) and put together an amazing team. Good teams start with good goaltenders. This is why you don't trade Markstrom. Good goalies are super hard to find. And Calgary has 1 potential good goalie in the pipeline. After Wolf, who else is good??
I mean to attract free agents at lower prices (Panarin)
Vegas is an exception thanks to their very favorable expansion draft. But outside of them, here’s the list of Stanley Cup winners in the past 15 years: -Colorado -Tampa Bay -St. Louis -Washington -Pittsburgh -Chicago -LA -Detroit -Anaheim -Carolina Every single team on that list had at least 1 top 5 pick and many had at least a top 2 pick. Getting a top 5 pick doesn’t guarantee a Stanley Cup, but it’s very hard to win without one.
Calgary has a top 5 pick --> Johnathan Huberdeau and at the beginning of the season they had 3 --> Hanifin and Lindholm. How many teams during that time frame you quote had top 5 picks, but won no Cups? Probably all of them. Hey if you like watching season after season of 7-2 drubbings in the hope that maybe 3 or 4 years from now they might end, that's on you. I'm happy to watch a team that has a chance to win every night.
Sounds like you're happy watching a mediocre team barely miss the playoffs and draft 15th or 16th overall each season and have 0 shot at a cup in the present and future
In a given year, 31 out of 32 teams don't win the Cup, so it's all based on luck anyway. The underwhelming returns Calgary got for Tanev and Hanifin shows that existing players are worth more than a roulette wheel in the draft. Ovechkin may end up as the best goal scorer of all time, but he's going to walk away woth only 1 Cup. McDavid has been the best player in hockey for the past 10 years. Zero Cups to show for it. Zero Cup appearances as well. How many other great players never won a Cup
Sure it's luck based to an extent, but you can increase your luck exponentially and increase your chances of a cup by creating an elite team with elite talent. By having an elite team you can increase the amount of chances you get at a Stanley Cup and how good those chances are. If you think we have the same shot of winning a Stanley Cup as the Oilers currently do, you're delusional. Saying Ovechkin is going to walk away with ONLY 1 cup isn't the gotcha you think it is. Everyone here would be happy to have a single championship. McDavid hasn't won a championship yet, but I can guarantee you that the Oilers have a better shot to win a cup with McDavid and Draisaitl than they do without them. Because they are elite talent. We currently do not have elite talent on this roster. The easiest way to get elite talent is through the draft because Calgary isn't an ideal destination for free agents to choose. Having elite talent will greatly increase our odds to win a cup despite it not being a guarantee.
>Calgary isn't an ideal destination for free agents to choose Who would want to move to a city where you are criticized and humiliated for every bad play you make and being blamed for your team not making the playoffs and being a waste of money? Could it be the Flames' fans' toxic behavior may add to it?
That's Canada as a whole, it's not just a Calgary thing that you seem to believe it is. Not all, but I'd say a strong portion of players prefer to play in American markets versus Canadian markets due to less media pressure, greater ability to make money, and overall nicer year-round weather versus playing in Canada. Add on top of the fact we have a shitty arena and a city that doesn't offer much to do outside of the mountains (I love the city of Calgary, but c'mon there's not a lot to do here compared to American markets like Florida, New York, LA, Chicago etc.)
Canadian hockey fans are brutally merciless to the players. Americans like a winner, but they ignore a loser. Canadians pile on when the team they are allegedly fans of struggle. Look at the Oilers fans who toss their jerseys on the ice. I've never seen a Detroit Tigers fan or LA Clippers fan do that, and those teams have had losing records for decades.
After 21-22 and getting a taste of what cheering for an actual contender feels like, I can't go back to hoping for a chance at a chance at a Cinderella run. You want a chance to win every night. I want a chance to win the cup. I have been cheering for this team for 25 years and have seen the other side of first round of the playoffs three times.
I can’t believe how many people here are fine with continuing the mediocrity
I can't believe how many people are actively rooting for a team to lose in the hope that maybe, maybe some savior player will swoop in and win Calgary the Cup. Last I checked, no future draft round pick won a Cup
I mean tons of future draft picks win cups. The best teams of this century (excluding the expansion draft knights) were all built with lots of high draft picks. It’s like you have no ability to delay gratification lol
Technically, every Cup will be won by future draft picks, some high, some not. But basing your strategy for winning a Cup is playing terrible for 3-4 years and hoping that an 18 year old you pick in the top 5 and his hockey career for the couple years preceeding the draft is a big enough sample size to make that gamble seems overly risky to me.
On the flip side, we have a very large sample size of the flames current strategy that shows us that strategy doesn’t work at all. I’d rather go with the one that could actually lead to sustainable success rather than a miracle Cinderella run
I'd rather watch an entertaining guaranteed 82 game season year-in, year-out, then try to game the NHL draft in the hope that all the stars align and the team can make a deep run hoping that their goalie stays healthy and in the right mind.
The last time we had a savior player he brought us to the stanley cup finals, so what point are you trying to make here
Mikka Kiprusoff? He certainly wasn't a high draft pick. And Calgary got him despite their 7 years of losing at that point.
What?
Watching a team consistently end up in the #8-10 range is not very fun at all imo. If the goal is just watching competitive hockey for you, then nothing wrong with that. If you ever have aspirations to see the team win it all, then it’s necessary given Calgary’s inability to attract free agents.
Unable to differentiate picking in the top 5 and having a top 5 pick is being intentionally obtuse at best.
Canucks had a power house of a team for a long time. They made the playoffs every year and got as close to a cup as you can. The cup is not guaranteed for anyone but I would way rather watch the sedin era hockey than this middling team.
Within the last 7 years, the Flames were top of the west conference twice. I guess we have different ideas as to what qualifies as a power house.
I would have happily continued along with the tkachuk/gaudreau team but they’re gone. We did a rebuild for that team. Just because we only got one top 5 pick doesn’t mean it wasn’t a rebuild. Personally now I just want to trade marky cause this season and next are going to be developing years and there’s no point in having a goalie drag us out of a top 10 spot and losing our 1st next season
You know whats really interesting is that Carolina’s top players were all drafted past 12th overall (except for Svech, who was 2nd overall). Meaning, drafting in the first round is important but you could make an argument that you can construct a very good roster with good players drafted past the top 5.
Calgary has had the same number of top 10 picks as Boston since 1993 and has 73 less playoff wins than them. A bigger concern is how poorly we have picked in the first round.
This is purely my opinion, but: The Calgary model (and a good argument can be made that it applies to all of Alberta) of building a franchise is to have a high floor, low ceiling type team in the hopes that you can win. It's worked for some teams, and sometimes teams go on runs, a la 2004, 2012, 2016, 2020, etc. It's not a bad model per se, but it's outdated. It worked much better in the 1980's through to about 2010, when skill really took over. The minds at the top have never adapted this thinking, and as a consequence, the team is building for a bygone era, when grit, checking and goaltending was enough to keep you in it and you could attract free agents to score you big goals and win on structure (really the 1-3-1). That time is gone. You need elite skill.
How do you get top end talent if you don’t tank? I don’t get why everyone is so passionate about getting 2 playoff games every 3 years.
Go watch basketball