cross16

No surprise, just a little surprised it took so long. Interesting to see if we see the full staff announcement because outside of the delay taking time to build a staff it doesn'tt make a lot of sense and will lead to rumors. I hope i'm wrong on this one but I don't like the hire but I do really hope it works because if it doesn't its back to the drawing board for this organization so i'll be pulling for him. Hopefully he can take the off-season and full training camp to evaluate the systems/tactics and come up with some new approaches and put a different stamp on the team. if what we say in the playoffs is the way he wants to play than the Flames really need to trade Gaudreau. Not a good fit for how Ward had them playing and I don't see him getting back to his game under that system.

yes players are going to take a “reduction” via escrow so this is essentially jist extending that to the rest of their employees. what isn’t know is if the flames plan to reduce their player spending or their cap budget. I believe that is what Phoenix was referring to as there are some rumors of other teams cutting not just employee salaries but reducing their cap spending too.

as a head coach maybe but he’d very likely be in high demand for Asst/assoc coach jobs.

Bottlom of this article. 20% reduction effective Sept 1st does not mention their player payroll just their employees

I’ve always thought it was going to be Ward and I think the fact that it’s out there they the flames cut payroll 20% makes it a certainty. Hard to justify going after a high profile and expensive coach after you do that. Probably even leading to a tough negotiation with Ward

Keumper, when healthy, is a very good goalie and one i've liked for a while. But a 30 year old goalie with 2 years on his deal and who has never been a true starter in this league is not going to generate a 1st round pick. I honestly think the Yotes will be lucky to get a 2nd for him because the goalie market is going to be flooded with options. - Keumper, Anderson and Matt Murray all rumored to be available in trade - Some news that Vegas is learning towards offering Lehner a contract extension and putting Fleury on the block. If not Lehner is a free agent - Some rumors Rangers might buyout Lundqvist. If they don't they have some younger goalies with the expansion draft looming - Benning seems pretty adament they want Markstrom back. Can they do it and if they don't do they keep Demko then or move him before expansion draft? - A few intriguing UFA options as well (Crawford, Talbot, Khudobin, Markstrom, Holtby) Good luck getting a 1st round pick for a 30 year old goalie with those options available. I agree it is a fireable offence if he does it but none of me believes he would pay that price. I don't doubt the Flames are calling but they are not going to pull the trigger on that unless it's a bigger package.

I really like Friedman as an analyst so this isn't to challenge his credibility but i'm a big believer that Treliving and the Flames use him as a pawn to leak info. Friedman does a lot of reporting and speculating on the Flames but IMO seems to hardly ever have a good handle on their direction. Long story short, i don't put a lot of stock into what he says unless it's a done deal. I find it's generally a smoke screen but for what's its worth he has mentioned he suspects the Flames are open to anything and will make changes just won't sell low.

I think the Flames owners mandate is you can't win the cup if you are not in the dance, so no they are not willing to miss the dance and if they do you better get right back at it. Fair to question and disagree with that approach but I also don't think it's fair to say it's wrong or question they commitment to the team. This is a club that had a 4-5 year run of paying 2 head coaches, has authorized a bunch of buyouts and even in a crappy economy for them have kept spending at the cap. I don't agree with the approach but unless you know them personally I think suggesting they don't want to win a cup isn't fair. They do, they just disagree with some on how to get there.

Friedman has the Flames in on everyone. until it happens i'd take his reports with a grain of salt. I do not see Treliving giving up his 1st for Keumper.

The Flames captain is a undrafted free agent. Their best offensive forward, and top 75 player in the game, is a 4th round pick. Their 2nd best dman is a 4th round pick. One of their top 6 forwards, who was top 50 in the league this year in 5 on 5 goals, is a 6th round pick I get it's easier to focus on what you don't have than what you do and for sure Point is a failure for a club that had him in their own backyard, but let's not pretend this is easy nor forget that the Flames are actually pretty successful in finding gems themselves.

I would put Gaudreau in this bucket too as it's the trio of them not panning out as hoped as the major reason the Flames are spinning their wheels. Go back to 15/16 and it was looking like Gaudreau/Monahan were already top 50 players in the NHL and Bennett was coming, now none of them are there. I don't think you can point to one thing for this, and IMO you don't point at the organization for either Gaudreau or Monahan, but I do wonder about injuries. I feel like just about every year Monahan as a late season injury he has to take care of and I wonder if that has always delayed his off season training, or gotten him away from trying to train to be faster. that's always a thought, and in terms of Gadureau i personally feel he flat lined more because I just don't get the sense he does everything off the ice he needs to do in order to be the best on the ice. If Gaudreau/Monahan played like top liners in the Dallas series there is no question in my mind the Flames win the series. I really think the whole lack of drive or intensity is unfair though. he doesn't show it in some ways you want maybe but it's there. This is a guy who plays through injuries, inlcuding not calling his GM back after the Flames shut him down, is 4th all time in game winning goals for the Flames, and IMO plays well in the playoffs (minus the Avs series). Sure he isn't physical and i think he comes across as laissez faire, but I think he wants to win bad and he generally shows that in his play, for me anyway. I agree he won't be a play driving skating if he can't fix his skating but I'm always now really wondering how things would have been if he didn't get stappled to Gaudreau. Did his game perhaps modify to play off Johnny's strengths and was it at the detriment to other areas. I think the Flames should be open to anything to improve their team but I'm more open to moving Gaudreau than I am Monahan and I do think you could still get some of that scouting report back. part of my thinking is looking at St Louis. Everyone likes to point at Bennington as the big moment that they became a cup contender but I don't agree. He was a huge part no question but for me what made the bigger different was Ryan O'Reilly went from being a really good center to be being a game changer. I've always put ROR and Monahan in a similar category of player.

If rebuild means moving out pieces, really any pieces, for futures i'm open to that. As I've said before i think what makes the most sense to me is to move out established players and target players on other organizations that are poised for a breakout and see if you can capitalize that way. But i think the days or stripping down a team for high draft picks are basically dead with the lottery changes, and on top of that I don't see that as an option for the Flames. Even if you dealt both Gaudreau and Monahan and got no active players back you are left with this: Tkachuk - Lindholm Mang - Backlund Lucic - Bennett - Dube Gio - Valimaki Hanifin- Andersson That's not going to be a lottery pick team. Not saying it would make the playoffs either, but honestly i can make a case for it, but that's not a bottom 5 roster. Your likely going to finish in the 8-13 range in the league so you are banking on some extremely small odds of getting a top 5 pick. In order to do that you are trading Gaudreau, Monahan, Lindholm, Tkachuk and Gio and then at that point you'd have a lottery pick team. That just isn't going to happen, nor should it. Stripping this down to the studs to rebuild it, where the odds say your likely to just going to rebuild a similar product, is a waste of time and money IMO.

Barzal cracked his kneecap in his draft year and missed a few months. He was healthy at the draft but because he missed time he wasn’t able to answer some questions around his game/growth. At the same time he was so dominant at the under 18s that year his slide was still a surprise, but I agree it’s really tough to predict when players will slide.

would be plausible as the Flames tend to avoid drafting players with injuries. Little more conservative that way. He did have issues going into the draft but got surgery after his draft year and apparently has been fine and pain free since. So that’s still a miss from the flames imo with the scouting process.

I fully expect Ward will be the guy but I think that it is a mistake. For some reason this is centering only around the playoffs and ignoring that the entire body of work under Him which is mediocre at best. The playoffs for me just confirmed he isn’t the guy because he made far too many errors in bench management. It should be more about process than results and for me when you look at the process under Ward it wasn’t good enough to make him the permanent coach. the “delay” I suspect is more about Treliving taking his time and looking at the whole staff and filling out the bench.

Bednars team outplayed the Stars in the series and if it weren’t for him having to play his 3rd string goalie they almost for sure win the series. Contrast that with the Flames who got out played by the Stars in their series and goaltending kept them in it.

I thought it was a mistake at the time too, Macdonald over Demko, but I think the flames gambled on the upside which is not the end of the world. While Demko looked fantastic these last few games most of his career progression has been towards a solid tandem/backup goalie. See if that changes and it always can with goalies but I would agree that 3 games doesn’t make a career even though they were very impressive. At the time I think the flames were poor at scouting the US which is likely a reason why they rated Macdonald over Demko. The positive is I think the Flames do a much better job scouting the US now. 2014 was also one of those awkward drafts you have when you are between GMs. They almost always turn out to be busts.

Yes but he changed the criteria. Last year's was a true prospect list but this year he took the young player approach and included players in the NHL so now Tkachuk makes the list and a big reason for the bump. In addition to Tkachuk he is still really high on Valimaki and Emilio Petterson and the Flames undrafted signe Connor Mackay. But Tkachuk is a major reason why they bumped up the list.

Interesting info that I think will surprise some people. Corey Pronman, who is a writer for the athletic and focuses on prospects and the draft, did an organization ranking of all players 21 and under. It was not prospects it was young players so players who are in the NHL count. Flames ranked 12. It's behind a paywall so I won't post too much but Tkachuk makes this list and probably pushes them much higher. But good reminder that the talent base here is pretty good.

Are we not already? The very strong general consensus I am seeing out there, and it's almost unanimous among people I talk with, is that this team needs changes. However, it is possible, and IMO the right answer, to say that you need to make changes to your core and you need an upgrade at head coach. Both conclusions are independent of each other.

I don't think that criticism of Boudreau is fair nor fair to put all on him. 50% of the time he's gone to the playoffs he's gotten out of the first round which is a significantly better stat than the Flames over that same time period. Also if you look at the individual series, his teams tend to put themselves in really good shape and be undone by bad goaltending at the worst time. It's not like the teams crack the code once he's gone either. Took 7 years for the Caps to win the cup, Trotz was there for 4 and wasn't out of the 2nd round for the first 3 years. I also think the criticism is dumb because you have to get there and he gets there with the best of them. I'm less convinced Ward is going to get them there over a full season. The results after the 7 game win streak under Ward were very mediocre.

I'm not even a big fan of his but after what i saw in the playoffs i would 100% hire Boudreau over Ward if he would come here. They are built really well for his style. i would also check in on Jim Montgomery. But as i've said before, and even despite my criticism, there is value with going with the known commodity instead of the devil you don't. But it's going to mean the Flames continue to spin their wheels with an avg at best coach and likely be held back becuase of it. So while there is some logic in the decision i don't think its a good or exciting one either.

I see it very differently. Match ups - He spent half the playoffs burying his top line with d zone starts and tried to use them as a shutdown line. Even in situations where he had last change, he routinely got caught with his 4th line against the Stars best line and it cost him at least 1 goal (that I can remember off the top of my head). I thought Bowness schooled him when it came to line management. Situations: In Game 4 he left Backlund-Lindholm out for a 3 min shift to finish the game on the heels of them killing a bunch of penalties in the 3rd period. For me, pulling Talbot was one of the biggest coaching blunders I've ever seen. it made zero sense to me when he did it and his rationale on it continues to make zero sense because he had a timeout. Playing Rinaldo is also a pretty big blunder for me. I get the other side to that equation but leaving yourself so thin in terms of special teams for a player that gives you no ability 5 on 5 or doesn't do anything for you made no sense to me. It's fair to say that it's not realistic to predict the Flames would get into such penalty trouble but my view is that a coach needs to be prepared for as many scenarios as he can. This is a big fail for me. I also don't really agree that buy in was there. The Flames had multiple slow starts and when things got tighter against Dallas they abandoned what was successful against Winnipeg and went into a passive shell. Not fair to put that all on Ward, but I can't put that in the win column for him either. Those are some pretty critical issues in management and all of them reflect poorly on Ward and the staff (Ward should not be singled out here either). I am not advocating, nor do i believe, that it would change the outcome of the series but they are all large enough issues to convince me they should not name him the permanent coach unless they can't get anyone else.

This is my number 1 fear when team promote assistants, see success and the tout them as the head coach. Was it because he was the right guy or was he just the next guy. It's one of the biggest traps in pro sports, believing that the immediate success you have is tied to the coach and not taking a bigger picture look at what happened. 80% of the time the players and and the situation are what changed but the coach gets undue credit and then falls on their face the next season. the more i've sat on it, the more i'm now firmly in the camp that making Ward the head coach will be a mistake. I just did not see enough in the way of adjustments, bench management and player buy in during that Dallas series to make me believe it was Ward who moved the needle. As i've said all along I do give him credit for changing the culture, making it positive and allowing the team to get back to their game but I also question that he can keep that going. I think he helped a bad situation and there were some impressive things in there that he did and deserve credit for but I also thikn you can find a coach who can keep that type of culture going but who is stronger in bench management and accountability. I attribute the turnaround the Flames did more to the players and the situation than to Ward as is true of most assistants who get promoted to the head coach. I fully expect they will give him the job but I don't think it's the right call. Unless rumors are true that the owners won't pay up for it or none of those other coaches want to be here.

Goaltending is a major story there. Injuries mean the Avs are down to the 3rd stringer and have not been getting saves. Be a different story if they were. Shouldn't change the narrative at all IMO.