travel_dude
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Everything posted by travel_dude
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Well, they decided he wasn't an NHL'er and traded him for Kale Kessy. Who?
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I think that LA wanted him to keep him away from us. They could have traded his rights to us, but chose a 4th from Dallas.
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I don;t think he has much choice but to throw support at the pair. Lack of options. It doesn;t mean he is sold on them. Bishop was prior to the 2016 draft and before Elliott was obtained. Supposedly, Bishop was giving the Flames his contract demands (reportedly >$6m long term) and they went a different direction. Hard to say if Tkachuk pick was involved, but they must have been asking for something valuable. I think that messed up any chance of Bishop wanting to sign with CGY, so he wouldn't accept a trade to CGY at the TDL. With MAF, the asking price was the 1st rounder. Tkachuk. I think that they tried to make another deal nearing the TDL 2017, but it seemed that JR had already made some kind of deal with Vegas. There was no reason to trade him at that point. They could keep him for the season and only lose MAF to expansion. It remains to be seen how long a leash BT gives his goalies. They gave up on Elliott after a bad series where they all played bad. Smith has the net for now.
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He tries to get both MAF and Bishop, but didn't like the asking price. He settled twice. Smith had 35-40 decent starts, but was bad the rest of them. As a 1a/1b option, he probably would have been fine. You have to wonder what BT is thinking during all this. Does he think that the team was the reason why Smith/Rittich was not good enough? Does he have belief that Gillies will be ready by next year? He's betting his job on the two goalies that don't exactly have history on their side. I wonder if he's calling other teams about their backup goalies. Starting the conversation now. I can't see him going into the season without a plan B.
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Calgary Flames Drafting and Development: Your Analysis
travel_dude replied to rickross's topic in Flames Talk
I think his conclusions are flawed at times. I only pay attention to some of his observations and some stats he uses, but you are correct. The other guy Kent Wilson (now at the Hockey Writers) has a more balanced position. Really FN is just another blogger spot that pumps up the current rosters and mgmt. The comments are asinine at times. Haynes has a better perspective. -
Obviously wishful thinking. Maybe I wasn;t saying it right, but 65% of the available points for the games starter. Not exactly 65% wins. We had one that was around 50% for points, but well below that in win %. The sentiment is we need to get better. A lot better.
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Goaltending was almost the reason for us being a top 5 drafting team last year. I would say that about 50% of Smith's starts were on fire. 25% were games that could have gone either way. 25% were just plain bad. 55 starts, 56 points, of which 6 were loser points. We need a starter that can win closer to 65% of the starts. Then the backup is just there to help maintain the points. Talbot had 31 wins but also 31 losses. If you are running a goalie for 55 starts or more, then you need better.
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First things first. Get rid of Melnyk and Doirion. They are the cause of the problems there. New GM and guys like Stone would want to stay. EK probably has zero confidence in PD's ability to create a winner and have any financial backing to pay for it.
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Their internal cap spelled the end of Turris. The owner got too involved in the negotiation. He ended up signing for the exact same money as Duchene makes and all it cost was an unprotected lotto pick in 2019. They cheaped out with Stone, not just this year.
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Calgary Flames Drafting and Development: Your Analysis
travel_dude replied to rickross's topic in Flames Talk
I don;t think the scouts changed that much between regimes, but the process of nailing down "the list" changed. The 2013 draft has one full time NHL player and one fringe (Gilmour) out of 8 picks. Klimchuk is still a prospect at this point. I do think that Burke had his fingerprints all over the 2013 (later picks) and 2014 drafts. It didn;t seem like the 2014 picks were well thought out. MacDonald and Smith? Montour, Dvorak, Point, Arvidsson all left on the board. -
I don;t understand the concept of a Gio cap. It once made sense that your best player and captain should be making the most. But that was 3 years ago, and it was for a player's last NHL contract. You can only use that number for so long. JH and Monahan today would not be that cheap. It makes the most sense for BT to offer max dollars now. Don;t worry about what Gio or JH is making. Find out what number you need to get to and sign the deal. It's only going to go up. Even if he doesn't score 30 this year, the cap will go up just a little more. A smart agent will look at % of the cap and compare JH's at the time of signing. You have to be reasonable as a GM and understand the market. Players less important are being offered way more. Some artificial internal cap will result in becoming a team like OTT.
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Calgary Flames Drafting and Development: Your Analysis
travel_dude replied to rickross's topic in Flames Talk
I was and am still okay with the trade for Dougie. Take away the fact that we traded him this year, and this was a scoop. Finding a top 2 D-man for some picks? Pretty rare in the NHL unless you draft and develop a top 1st rounder. We missed on Barzal, but BOS missed 3 times the same draft. They missed on Boeser. And we still have a guy like Hanifin who could become a top 2 D-man. The Hamonic trade is what it is. Perhaps overrated. Perhaps under-performed. Perhaps misused by a bad coach. I'm more annoyed that we were a playoff team for part of the season and ended up falling on our face to end the season. Instead of a 15-31 pick, it was a 12th. And while the shiny new toys look good in their age group competition, very few are can't miss. How many Strome's does it take to have one actually perform in the NHL. And what happened to NYI? A team that had JT fell off the map to the point of not even being able to keep him. Maybe Hamonic had a bigger part of their success that we don't see. -
Umm, didn't we trade with PITTS? I hate Chia too, but I'm kinda glad he's in EDM to mess things up for them.
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The club he took ever was close to the cap as it was. Wideman and Stajan's deals were not his doing. So, to make the club any better he was forced to spend to the cap. Engelland was an overpay, but that's what it took. Some mistakes were made. Every GM makes them. You have to look at the core of the team to see the good parts. Top 6 all locked up with only the top players making more than $6m. Defense top 4, though it struggled last season, all but one making less than $5m (for now). Bottom 6 making $3m or less, mostly around $1m. Not core players but young enough to possibly get there. The buyout now has all players earning what they would get in the market. You can be a cap team with 2-3 good forwards and 1-2 good d-men. WASH and VGK had more than that, yet WASH is a victim of their own success. They re-signed a guy that regularly leads the leagues in penalties and suspensions to a massive overpay. I'm not trying to pat BT on the back and say job well done. He is building a team starting with the D and adding skill and speed every year. He got a big fish without bankrupting the team. He added three RHS players that we didn't have equivalents to. The need to buy out Brouwer was less about cap as it was about giving opportunity for a player to have a better season. 12 minutes of Brouwer or 12 minutes for a player that could see a break out. The mistakes are widely known. It what you do to fix them that makes a decent GM. The only thing not addressed yet is a starter beyond this season.
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I had that opinion as well. Ex-Nuck. Warning bells. He managed to have a good season in TO, but so what. I was okay with BMo, but he was at the end of his career and was still a decent guy.
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I would say there's always room for adjustment. If teams didn;t make a single change in the summer then you could probably do that more effectively. You scout the team leading up to the game and pass on to the team how to play them. The only issue I have is that a goalie has runs where they are feeling it, and you want to take advantage. Just don;t go too long. Our coaches seemed to have the play until you lose two in a row mindset. With Smith, it was play until we have a B2B and you are a little tired and you have lost recently. I agree that Smith needs to be fresher in the later stages of the season. At most play 40/60 then 10/22. Give him a tuneup game just before playoffs. All this depends on having the right guy backing him up. If Rittich can't handle 20 early on, then you need to find someone who can. I'm not even that comfortable with Smith/Rittich, but it doesn;t look like we have a choice. IMHO, we need to have Rittich work with a trainer in the summer. As soon as he gets back off his honeymoon. Too bad his arbitration hearing was set for the same day as his wedding. That bites. Maybe why they settled.
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Hartley said that, but then it was a coach decision. Then it was win-and-you're-in. It sounded last year like Smith decided his own starts.
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Managed by who? The goalie coach? The head coach? The player? Lack wasn't used early enough, and when he finally got the start he was useless. Rittich got limited starts, even when he showed he was playing well. Before that, it was the 3 headed monster. We can banter back and forth about how many starts Smith should get, but it comes down to the coach making choices.
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You really think Lack will beat out Kinkaid or Schneider for a backup spot? He's depth for NJ. Minors for him. I agree with your other sentiments, though. Smith/Rittich start to the season (assuming that is the pair) will determine BT's timeline for replacing Smith. He may already have had those discussions with another GM and is holding off right now. I would be surprised if he doesn't have a plan B. IN some ways, that is the annoying thing about BT; he's not agile in making deals. His trades are usually based on weeks or months of talking. Grubauer could have been had, but it seemed a quick decision. Sure, we didn't have a 2nd but could have offered a roster player and bought out Orpik as well.
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Going backwards is relying on a 36 year old goalie the season after he fell on his face to end the season. Would you bet your annual salary on Smith/Rittich providing better than league average goaltending this season? That is what BT could be doing. All I am saying is that a smart GM has plans for when plans don't work out. Or they mitigate a risk by adding a vet.
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I think Rittich could handle limited starts the same way he did last season, but that's not the real point is it. We need a starter in 2018/20 and we need to have a guy that can step up in case Smith goes down. We have that luxury everywhere else in the lineup, except in nets. Gillies and Parsons will likely be the pair in Stockton, so it may be more like Rittich/Gillies for starts there. That is all.
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I think what Kehatch is alluding to is the lack of a bonafide starter option, if Smith were to go down for any extended period of time. We have no plan B. There is the chance that one of Rittich or Gillies could prove themselves to be ready to be a starter, but that is not a safe bet for a GM that has played every card in his hand. Both are possible backups, which is fine. Neither has shown they are durable enough to withstand a long period of being a starter. That is the key issue here. Gillies should be lighting up the AHL before he is considered to be ready for that role. Rittich needs to show more consistency. It's one thing to have a 5/6 D or bottom 6 F that is questionable, but be able to shorten the bench to cover the issues. It's another to hang an entire season on a 36 year old starter with injury history and poor results to end the season and two backups that provided middling results beyond starting one game every five or six. BT may start camp with the existing 3 goalies, but he may also be doing that with plan B in his back pocket. He doesn't strike me as a guy that pins the season on what he hopes will happen.
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All I can go by is that he says he is working on getting this going. I suspect he's already talked with the agent, but there is no real time for serious discussions right now. Hanifin is a tough deal. Chia saves time by just agreeing to whatever the player wants for however long. Trade away players when you need space or have lost the season and need to guarantee a bottom 5 finish (even with McJezzub).
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Since you brought this up, what is the best way of developing guys like Rittich, Gillies and Parsons? Rittich is probably more like Ramo in that he's not a prospect, just a guy with limited NA experience. He's shown good and bad at the AHL and NHL levels. Those that follow Stockton say he'll follow up a great game with a stinker. He could be a good NHL backup, but not really sure how you manage him to get there. Gillies is getting closer. He's had a taste of the NHL and while he wasn;t bad, he didn;t look ready for the speed. If one was being careful with his development, he would not be in the NHL for at least one more season, possibly two. He lost a year to injury, so he really hasn't had much time to develop. He's also played more of a 1a than a starter. How do you manage that development? Do you bring in a goalie trainer for him? Parsons is a little worrisome. He's supposed to be our top prospect, but he keeps getting injured. The latest was a tweak before dev camp. If he goes to Stockton, he will need to play a 1b role, but is there enough games between him and Gillies? He'll probably play a bit in the ECHL just to get more playing time between starts in Stockton. He's just going on 21, so he's got time before he's liable to be ready. Unfortunately, Smith is the only goalie we have ready to start this season. Based on what we have done this year to prepare, it looks likely Rittich will be the backup. If BT has confidence in the group, then that's fine. He made changes to the rest of the team. Hopefully his confidence is based on more than just Sigalet's opinion.
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There just isn't anyone out there that fits the description of a backup turning starter. That is available that is. Gillies could become that in a few years. So could Parsons. A little risky to give either that role right now. Not much available in FA.
