travel_dude

One minute they are quoting a source close to the player and now thy are refuting it. If this is the case it's a mess again.

Ataboy. It is entirely possible that those two players have made us a destination not preferred. Kadri and Gio seemed to hate each other on the ice, and when a trade was proposed, he blocked it. I almost don't believe his reason then. Knew he was getting traded to some team. It might end up that we actually win a trade this time around. I thought Toffoli was a good trade, but that he was put in the wrong situation because of lines. We paid a lot for the player but I didn't consider it a loss. Jarnkrok was dumb because it's the value you pay if you are going to keep them. Maybe they chose to not offer, but it seemed like he fit Sutter hockey even if he wasn't scoring. As far as UFA's, there really isn't anything out there that does it for us. Some complementary pieces, but no home runs. Not this year. Wait another year and put the team in a good place. Make trades that help us long term.

Steinberg speculates. Francis reports it yesterday as a foregone conclusion and a trade is imminent. Today the facts get reported by Hailey. Today, Francis reports that he "won't" sign with the Flames. I don't trust anything from EF, since he is all about creating stories and click revenue. Gaudreau will never hit 100 points. Gaudreau will never sign with the Flames. The latter turned out, but was not the entire story.

I'm really curious how this all broke. The team wouldn't want the story out there. Why does Tkachuk want it put out there?

Help me out on this. The article says a couple of things. In one breath they say he won't commit to a long term deal. In another it says he won't sign period. Which is the case?

Well Hailey is definitely a local media person. But that leads me to also believe that he doesn't see the benefit of arbitration or 8 years. 8 years takes him out of the windfall for his next contract. I could see them agreeing to a 5 year deal. That takes him into the higher cap days and still young enough to cash in. The only thing that makes that unlikely is him providing the list of teams. That's a new wrinkle. Maybe due to the arbitration thing, since he didn't want it. Or maybe due to Johnny leaving. Don't know. Let the sweeps begin I guess.

He had gone through the lockdown not being able to attend a funeral of his grandfather. Like a lot of people in this country, he expected freedom to return. Went to the Stampede last year thinking this was the start of the rest of his life. Last fall, all that changed again. An election fought during and about a pandemic. Not quite lockdowns but limited mobility. I wouldn't say that this impacted his decision last summer, but when we are looking again at a fall of potential lockdowns (in some way shape or form), he may have started to panic. What if something happens and I can't fly to NJ. What if my wife can't have people come to see her. We missed the window of opportunity. It was last summer. If we offered 9.5M as the starting offer this year, then maybe we didn't really understand the player. Had we offered 10.5M initially, he may have signed right away or rejected it. He had too much time to think about it. Sometimes you have to go in with your final offer right away. It may not have mattered. But it may have.

The only reason that the Eichel trade was low was due to the risk of never being able to play at a top level again, combined with a $10M AAV.

Every series adds more than just seats. Money for Flames gear. Season ticket interest. Selling out the next season.

Tkachuk kinda knows his best numbers are behind him on this team. Going to arbitration on this team is loaded with risk to him. It doesn't really matter if he is traded or not beforehand. The new team will not offer him 8x10M. They will take the arbitration ruling and work on re-signing him or trading him again. So, I think he will take an offer that is reasonable. He gets to be the face of the franchise here. They can even offer him the captain spot. Sitting back, he could end up in a lesser team and end up being traded or going to FA and not getting the huge offers.

The only real deadline was last summer. You sign him or you are playing a rental. When it passed, JH decided to not continue to negotiate until the off-season. That may not have been known when they failed to get a deal in place. It has been his MO, though. He signed his previous deal on the cusp of the season. Anyway, I'm gonna stop posting about this. It happened and we got burned. Good luck to the player. Hope we continue as a team that battles for the playoffs and has a new arena with a great fan and player experience. The nosebleed sections in the Dome are too much for me.

We have had useless coaches along the way. Backlund as a winger. Dube as the top RW. Monahan as the top C, no matter what the results. I was referring to a point in a season where we brought in a coach that had savy.

I get that. But at the end of the day, they banked entirely on him re-signing. His play under Sutter was trending towards being more than a p/gp player. He was going to have leverage. Another relatively low scoring season wasn't going to make him cheaper, not for the risk involved. He would probably walk to UFA just to have choices, over a $7M offer. Maybe I am painting the owners with a bad brush, but it seems that BT would have preferred to get this deal done last summer, regardless of whether we think it was an overpay. That way you can worry about the remaining RFA's and other parts in 2022. $9M sets the bar for Tkachuk. But anyway, no point arguing over something that didn't happen.

Hmmm, he played the final 20 games with 23 points last year. I think it was pretty obvious that he was back. He was to the point of being the new franchis player. No Gio to compare to. He has led the team in scoring every year but two; one was Tkachuk beating him by 3 points, the other was his rookie year. Unlike almost every team in the league, we did not have a player making big bucks. Any 8 year deal was going to be costly. Not worth an extra million? What were they expecting? At the worst, he would walk to the Flyers as a UFA because we wouldn't pay for another 70 point season. At best, we would have to pony up for a 99 point season where he has leverage.

That is the more frustrating part. I don't hold a grudge to the player. The owners and BT got frustrated with the end of the process. But it was their gamble to somehow save money. That's the part I don't get. Let's say they offered something as high as $8M last summer and it was rejected. How does a guy in his contract year put up as bad numbers? He saw his game start to turn around with Tkachuk and Sutter behind the wheel. He knew he would have better leverage if he waited. Maybe calling for BT's head is extreme. He would have had to get ownership approval to max out an offer last summer. Or at least I think he would have had to.

Up till last week, we were in the "too good to tank, not yet a perennial contender" state. We were adding to the team to get there. Finally had got rid of the old culture and had the team playing as a team. That's not the obvious sign of a need to rebuild. Losing your top player has impact to the plans, but it doesn't signal rebuild. It's obvious to you, but that doesn't make it right. It may be the best idea for the long run. Or it may be the worst. As an investment, rebuilds can be money losing. As a 5-10 year plan, they have far more risk to losing money.

All it takes is one media guy to mention it and they start piling on with clickbait articles. So, trending? Sure. So is the PM's haircut.

I would say he is more concerned with not developing players at the NHL level. Rozie got sat when he wasn't consistent. Fair statement, but I thought he was still better than Lucic or Ritchie. Then again, they were role players and Sutter wanted Rozie to be a top 9 C. When he was finally sent to the AHL, it was a roster issue not the player. We brought in Carpenter and Jarnkrok and had no cap or roster spots available. Rozie was projected to be in that first game after TDL. Valimaki is an example of a player that was frozen. He didn't want to make mistakes, but his inaction led to them. He wasn't using his frame. He had been passed by Kylington's great camp and consistent play in the first quarter. I agree that he doesn't have the time to be an AHL coach in the NHL. Give him Bedard and he would say, great, another small player.

Here's the passage that bothered me, and not about Gaudreau but about the process... And this is the truth, I promise: I cherished the time I spent in Calgary. For a long time, Meredith and I saw our future there. We wanted to re-sign last summer. We were looking at homes to start a family. But it just didn’t work out and we thought this summer might be different.

Really? Speculation that we are trading one player counts?

Yeah, I out on this. Player's agents issuing press releases. Gang of 8 remain unnamed. The entire team painted a certain way. It's a tough situation, both to defend and to the possible outcomes for people involved. Innocent or guilty.

Barzal is not getting a deal from NY close to that. He's more of a playmaker than goal scorer. He has never managed more than 22 goals and that was also his best assist season at 63 assists. They offered a UFA with far better stats less than $9.5M, if at all. Back to the deal. Sounds like they get the short end, but a guy able to score 35 goal on a defensive system? Kylington gives them a solid LD that bumps down Aho. I would consider Zary, but let's not devalue Mangiapane that much. Just a trade thought. Gives them someone to replace Johnnie with on a top line. A playmaker we don't have.

I think his decision depends on what we are doing this year. He came to a team that struggled with consistency and had a lax attitude to competing. The team let those guys go. I think he was as fed up with JH as he was impressed. The team stuff that he did impressed. The one man stuff not so much. But it's hard to get a read on him. He was proud of the team. We decide to go into a rebuild, and I doubt he comes back. Too frustrating. You instill the ethic, but have to work on the new guys to get them to buy in. He only loved coaching the team when they were 100% bought in.

So, here's an off the wall thought. Tkachuk may have been holding off waiting to see how BT as going to handle Johnny Walkie. So far nothing to address it. Is that the sticking point? So, my solution is we trade for Barzal and sign Tkachuk. Mangiapane and Kylington goes to NYI. Barzal gets a bit less than we offered Gaudreau (8.5 - 9.0) Tkachuk signs long term for 9.0 Not as fun as looking at potential returns for Matty. But a lot more fun that watching a horrible trade happen and we are set back years.