travel_dude

Zary injured by a headshot. Don't have details, but it might be concussion.

He was a reach at best. That is just a drafting mistake. Others were looking better and had less choppy strides. Poirier did struggloe with off ice stuff, but it could also have been part of being signed and not getting a chance at top 9. Wasted development. Klimchuk should have developed better but something happened. Maybe he was never NHL material but he had the look of a decent bottom 6 prior to AHL. We tend to value things that other teams don't. We picked Pelletier over Lavoie, though one seems to have a better chance (size) at the NHL. The other has a better mindset and will have to overcome some odds. But make no mistake, he is the better player at this point. Lavoie has attitude issues; well not attitude as much as lack of drive to be better. Has good numbers as a bigger kid in junior and played in Europe. Not a tough league, though.

I mostly agree, especially about holding on too long. At the same time, there has to be results. If his time at C consisted of soft penalties, then you could see reluctance to use him. Lucic was part of the problem, though. How do you get output when Lucic was almost to the point of quitting. I never agreed with moving Backlund to 3rd line and Lindy to top line. While it has worked pretty well, that sets up a disaster on the 3rd line. Bennett was part of that. As good as Lucic is, he is always good for a couple goals against. And Backlund looks disinterested at times. So we still only have 2 lines, one isn't even complete. As good as Mangiapane and Dube are, they don't belong on a line with Gaudreau. Too small on the wings. Ritchie is worse. Ryan is only slightly bigger but still is too small. I have no issue with Mangiapane with Tkachuk; that fits like a glove.

If Janko was SPA, it was only his opinion. Had he turned out (or actually been BPA), we would be laughing. As it is, he was let go for nothing. I would suggest that Pelletier and Zary are the only ones not in the AHL that you would consider top prospects. The others were always going to be risk/reward, so BPA is less of a strategy. BPA = vanilla in some cases.

Tkachuk boned us. That really goes back to playing hardball with Gaudreau though. Had we done the proper term with JH, we would have had more runway to be able to keep or trade him. As it stands, Tkachuk was again not projected for the right term. While BT can be given props for his value on negotiations, he planned it too close together. It seems like they were designed to be able to restructure the team, but does not have that okay to do from ownership.

We gave up on a player we couldn't protect (ie. lose him for nothing to Seattle) and got a 19 year old prospect plus a 2nd in 2022. Whether he was miscast or poorly developed or created a room issue, he was surpassed at EV by Mangipane. Let's face it, he didn't do enough here to justify being played up in the lineup. And didn't fit the RW spot we needed him for, or able to justify being a staple with Backlund and Tkachuk. Wasn't given enough opportunity for sures. But you have to give your coach enough trust to get those minutes and use them. If we had a line of Huberdeau and Duclair or Tippett (RHS), he may have done the same here. Failure to bring in effective RW's is a BT failure.

Yes, that's what I am saying. We may have one year left with Gio, Lucic and Backlund being effective. Lucic has no milestones that he will reach any time soon, so he is only playing for fun or playoffs. So, I almost expect a playoffs in 21/22 and missing in 22/23. If we somehow traded Gio this summer, then we may be able to turn Ras into a 10x better player. He needs the right partner like Gio had.

We are seeing the energy of a playoff Bennett. Good that he will help FLA. Get paid and see if you can keep it going next regular season. I don't know FLA's protection list, but you have to think Bennett is on it now.

If we have Pelleter coming in, we can't keep all three small guys. It's nice to have their skills but I think at most we can only keep 2 of 4. Gio and Tkachuk are like oil and water. Get rid of Gio to move forward. As good as he is still defensively, he tries to be the head of the offense; he is not. Need to move on. Backlund is an enigma. He's startung to decline but is still a good C. If he's the #3, then he doesn't need to be kept.

Seeing as this is not the plan we will take, what is realistic based on what we have still young enough to make a difference. IF we are going to be a big team, then Gaudreau, Dube, Mangiapane, Ryan and Pelletier are not the answer. If you want to get fast, trade Gio and Lucic and others.

Success in the AHL means little. We had fringe AHL goalies down there. Our best players are in the NHL. Even if Ruzicka, Phillips and Mackey were good enough to be classified as top prospects, they would not turn the AHL team into a winner. In most cases, those high level players don't even play in the AHL; they go directly to the NHL. Gaudreau and Monahan never played a single game there. So far, only Zary has played in the AHL, but that was a weird quirk of the WHL season.

Going by recent trends, 2022/23 should be a year we are out of the playoffs. I'm sure we are going to miss out on that special player.

Seems to be the consensus. Not sure how you ever change that with owners that want to have playoffs every year. Buffalo seems to be content to miss for such an extended period of time. They sign some decent players, only to have to trade them off. In a general sense, I am okay in competing for the playoffs yearly, but we haven't built a team that can do this. We are not taking the steps to get to that point. Talent assessment seems to be lacking. Lucic for Neal makes sense if you have a competitive team. Trading for Lazar, spending assets on older goalies trending down, but also doing it every year seems like a fool's errand. But this also goes back to the utter days of trading Phaneuf or Feaster trade of J-Bow and Iggy. If we are making trades of this level (like a Gaudreau or Monahan or Tkachuk), then it better be more than swapping 2 years for 2 years.

To be honest, not every team that makes noise in the playoffs comes from internal player development. Yes, they play a part, as do smart trades and UFA signings. With STL, it was ROR and Binnington that made the difference; one drafted and one traded for. With Tampa, it was drafting mostly, but it took a lot of time and a lot of trades and signings along the way. Cross identified a couple of guys that could make a difference. That's without even considering a couple of guys that are doing well in junior (Poirier and Francis) and a D-man known for his offense in Europe (Kinnvall). Each of those guys has to grow to make the NHL, but I would not discount them at this point.

Our karma was win or lose the wrong game at wrong time. One win too few, WPG gets Laine. One game too many, CBJ gets PLD (or Laine or Tkachuk or Puljujarvi). Perhaps Karma is changing for us now? If so, we go on another losing streak, VAN gets just enough to finish 4th and we get passed by DET, SJS, LA, CBJ and OTT. I'm thinking we go on a another losing streak because Sutter likes Ritchie in the top 6 and Nesterov playing with Ras. TBH, I don't see us beating the Oilers, Ottawa, WPG or VAN. We get maybe 1 or 2 wins at most.

How many coaches have decided that Bennett shall play a certain role and even though they experimented, went back to the tried and (not) true. BT deserves a lot of the blame, but let's not forget that BH, Gully, BP, and Wardo put him where they wanted him. While I don't think that any of them were the greatest coaches, they saw a lot of things that may have made them go a certain way. We don't see practices, camp, locker room. Aweful, is that full of awe?

I would love to know how you came to the conclusion without most of the "kids" playing meaningful minutes in CGY. Are you looking at AHL performance from the year and reading into that? I don't know. Are you looking at just the AHL or also following junior hockey? You are making general statements about players ceilings. What is your reasonings for those? You ever watch Ruzicka or Phillips or Pettersen play? Watch Mackey play recently? Was there some reason why we should have brought in Ruzicka to play 10 minutes or less on a grinder line? In general, there are so few recent draft picks that have made the NHL with any kind of noise. From the 2019 draft, the top 2 only have 18 goals over two seasons. From 2020 draft, the top scoring draft pick has 10 goals.

And just to clarify, I think the team has some decisions to make to improve this team. I don't think it's as simple as trading Gaudreau or Monahan or Gio or Tkachuk or Lindholm. We have team of spare parts. Some or maybe even all of these players are ones you can build a team around. Or they are players you can use to get the players to build around. Keep Gaudreau, but you better build around that kind of player. Keep Tkachuk but you need that skilled winger and C to make it work. Just an example.

Always tough to go back and identify where a player would have done better. 20 games should have given some indication, but it's difficult to be willing to lose games to get there. Very few teams are willing to do that. If anything the failing years of Hartley and Gully should have been the years. But then you have coaches fighting for their jobs. The only year I can think of where we had a decent chance to use Bennett with Gaudreau and a decent RW was the year we won the west. How do you make the change when things are coming up roses? The end of the year struggle was not just the team coasting or playing out the season, it was also goaltending starting to fail. This year was a perfect opportunity to try Bennett at #1C or #2C. Lindholm was not lights out better than any other option. We were losing from day 1. Could have made that choice and broken up the lines to start with. Whether we would have been better is questionable. I don't think we had that mix of players to get Bennett to 4th overall levels.

We won't be sliding until we are eliminated. This weekend could be the end of it. Or it could mean we are back from the brink.

I just don't see the equivalent players that Bennett could have played with. Last year, when Backlund was bumped to LW, who was used on #2C? I can't even tell you, but it still would have been Tkachuk or Mangiapane. Good players, but not at the same level as Huberdeau. That was my point. No players that really complemented him if he played C. No speedy RW to also be there.

Tampa was swept the first round that year and 7 other teams did not get it done. I get you have your opinion about the team and the results justify your opinion. Not everything is that cut and dried. Good team fail and bad teams win games. If you want to draw conclusions from the last two years as being what this team can do, that is your decision. I think you have to look deeper into it to make the right decisions about the roster.

Lwt's not lose sight of a few things. We don't have the players that ever complemented Bennett. While Gaudreau may be as skilled, he is not a complete player like Huberdeau. Tkachuk is a similar style to Bennett, so it's not complementary. As an individual player, he struggled to raise his game. We saw glimses of it, just not prolonged growth. Thachuk is playing with a different C. He has struggled this year in the last two months. That is on him and nobody else. The reasons may be the fault of leadership or the coach, but he has struggled. He was given an escalating contract because he was improving each year. He's stagnated. Calls to trade him are focused on the struggle. If he's injured, then that's a decent enough reason not to.

TBH, I think people are over reacting to a bad season by a team and blaming on a team being made up of crappy players. We have guys that perhaps should not be on the team (Nesterov, Simon, Buddy). Every team has them. Every team. I don't get the hate for Gaudreau, though. Stirs the offence on the team. His shortcomings include not singlehandedly bringing the Flames postseason success, being small, and not playing well in his end. Francis wants him traded because he's not going to re-sign. Frankly speaking, there are only a handful of players that contribute offense to this club. Only really have two contracts that are above the level of what they are being paid. The fact that the team can't get out of their own way in a "special" season means little. In reality, this season proves nothing. Evaluate the players, scout new ones, draft young players, make the trades to improve, move along.

Don't let facts get in the way of opinion. 2nd in division in goals for, 2nd in differential. Goals for against Ottawa 41. Goals against Ottawa 18. That alone is +23 in differential. They are +24 overal.