TSN: Flames ownership must commit to overhauling culture of mediocrity

[Anglesmith]

Lol you are such a silly poster sometimes. You're really going to use a total anomaly? One that rarely ever happens?

But yes when a team gets lucky and a player like that is picked 4th overall.. then gets to play on a team that actually rebuilt and has a 1st overall franchise changing player like Mackinnon, aswell as 2nd overall captain Gabriel landeskog and 3rd overall stud prospect bowen Byram, versus a team who has never even picked top 3, you can actually go mediocre franchise to a cup winning team! Crazy stuff eh?

The point is, the difference in quality between players ultimately has a gigantic effect on the rebuild if you are purely relying on somehow landing generational talent.

The Leafs got Matthews and the Oilers got McDavid, so everyone thinks a first overall will save you. Well, a lot of the time teams rebuild, get a first overall, and he turns out to be Lafreniere, Hughes, Hischier, etc... someone that is indistinguishable from other top 10 picks when all is said and done.

Like, the Rangers rebuild ended up netting them multiple extremely high picks, and they're all mediocre. The entire success of that franchise has been based on free agent signings, trades and developing prospects not taken at the top of the draft, along with carrying the right guys forward. (I'm aware that NY gets to do this on easy mode).

Look at Colorado: one elite top pick, but he alone is not responsible for the success of the team. The Cup comes from how the rest of the team was put together, and it wasn't through being intentionally bad. And in the case of Colorado, it was never a matter of intention that they ended up first in the Mackinnon draft. The players quit on the team and absolutely mailed it in that year. The Flames can't really be blamed because their players kept trying to win.

Applying the same critical lens to other franchises, I'm guessing that the common sentiment is that the Wings, Kraken, Kings, Wild, Stars, etc. are all currently in a situation where they should be actively tearing their franchises down in the offseason, right? They aren't currently true contenders and have either not managed to pick high lately, haven't picked high over a sustained period of several years, or haven't gotten quality players when picking high. If you think that the Flames should have been forcing themselves downwards to perpetuate the rebuild around 2015, this is the kind of team you're thinking about.

 

[Kranix]

Lol you are such a silly poster sometimes. You're really going to use a total anomaly? One that rarely ever happens?

But yes when a team gets lucky and a player like that is picked 4th overall.. then gets to play on a team that actually rebuilt and has a 1st overall franchise changing player like Mackinnon, aswell as 2nd overall captain Gabriel landeskog and 3rd overall stud prospect bowen Byram, versus a team who has never even picked top 3, you can actually go mediocre franchise to a cup winning team! Crazy stuff eh?

What rarely ever happens is getting a franchise savior at any draft position. How many players in the last 40 years drafted 1st overall, or anywhere else were the kind of playoff beast superstar that MacKinnon is? Might I add his first four years in the league were a real disappointment. You've got McDavid, Matthews, Kane, Crosby, Ovechkin, Lindros, Mats Sundin, maybe Modano,...then back to Mario Lemieux. Those teams still had to build a winner. How many kicks at the can do you want at 1st overall to get the Joe Thornton instead of the Alexis Lafreniere?

In the history of the amateur draft 1963 - 2022, the average career points for 3rd overall is 369, and the average career points for 4th overall is 363. GP for 3rd - 645, GP for 4th 575.

If a team is bottoming out, then by all means, trade the UFAs and play the young goalie, and try to get the best odds of first overall. But to say a team is committed to mediocrity because they picked 4th instead of 1-3, don't you think that's silly?

4th overall - Ron Francis, Mitch Marner, Steve Yzerman, Niklas Backstrom, Paul Kariya, Larry Murphy.

At 2nd overall you're not going to get a Malkin coming up every year, you might get a Tyler Seguin.

How insanely lucky was it to get Gaudreau in the 4th round?
Or Kucherov in round 2?

 

[23Monahan]

What rarely ever happens is getting a franchise savior at any draft position. How many players in the last 40 years drafted 1st overall, or anywhere else were the kind of playoff beast superstar that MacKinnon is? Might I add his first four years in the league were a real disappointment. You've got McDavid, Matthews, Kane, Crosby, Ovechkin, Lindros, Mats Sundin, maybe Modano,...then back to Mario Lemieux. Those teams still had to build a winner. How many kicks at the can do you want at 1st overall to get the Joe Thornton instead of the Alexis Lafreniere?

In the history of the amateur draft 1963 - 2022, the average career points for 3rd overall is 369, and the average career points for 4th overall is 363. GP for 3rd - 645, GP for 4th 575.

If a team is bottoming out, then by all means, trade the UFAs and play the young goalie, and try to get the best odds of first overall. But to say a team is committed to mediocrity because they picked 4th instead of 1-3, don't you think that's silly?

4th overall - Ron Francis, Mitch Marner, Steve Yzerman, Niklas Backstrom, Paul Kariya, Larry Murphy.

At 2nd overall you're not going to get a Malkin coming up every year, you might get a Tyler Seguin.

How insanely lucky was it to get Gaudreau in the 4th round?
Or Kucherov in round 2?

Yes you can get lucky late, or mess a 1st overall pick up, and yes you obviously have to build a team properly outside of drafting to win a Stanley Cup. All of this is painfully obvious.

But at the end of the day 10 of the last 14 Stanley cups have went to a team with a player they drafted 1st overall. A 1st overall (or 1st-3rd) overall has an enormous chance of giving your team a chance to win a cup vs drafting 4th or later, especially in the modern NHL.

 

[BobColesNasalCavity]

That's the difference between picking 1st - 3rd overall vs picking 4th and later. You actually might land a mcdavid/matthews/draisatl type player. Comparing the leafs and oilers situation where they landed franchise changing players 1st overall to ours where we have never even picked top three is pretty silly as they are nothing alike.

Yes and no. Definitely sucks having the Oilers draft Drai a spot ahead of Bennett, and the huge difference in careers since between those two slots. But we got lucky that the Canucks did us a favour by drafting Juoelvi the pick before Tkachuk. Imagine what this team looked like if Tkachuk goes to the Canucks instead.

 

[BobColesNasalCavity]

Look at Colorado: one elite top pick, but he alone is not responsible for the success of the team. The Cup comes from how the rest of the team was put together, and it wasn't through being intentionally bad. And in the case of Colorado, it was never a matter of intention that they ended up first in the Mackinnon draft. The players quit on the team and absolutely mailed it in that year. The Flames can't really be blamed because their players kept trying to win.

The Avs were also helped in their rebuild by being proactive. They held onto Duchene and then fleeced the Sens for what ended up being a lottery pick+. Not to say you’ll get a lottery pick all the time, but you have to make those moves when you’re meddling in mediocrity.

 

[Kranix]

Yes you can get lucky late, or mess a 1st overall pick up, and yes you obviously have to build a team properly outside of drafting to win a Stanley Cup. All of this is painfully obvious.

But at the end of the day 10 of the last 14 Stanley cups have went to a team with a player they drafted 1st overall. A 1st overall (or 1st-3rd) overall has an enormous chance of giving your team a chance to win a cup vs drafting 4th or later, especially in the modern NHL.

14 Stanley Cups, and how many different teams: 8, only 5 actually had a first overall pick they drafted on the roster.
Tampa Bay. Stamkos - injured and non-factor in 1st cup run.
Colorado - Nathan MacKinnon (After being historically bad, and not by design)
Pittsburgh - Sidney Crosby (winning an anomalous lockout lottery by being unintentionally terrible for 5 years)
Chicago - Kane, by winning the lottery with an 8.1% chance, and jumping from 5th to 1st, after never picking 1st in their history, and winning three Stanley cups up to that point.
Washington - Ovechkin - Generational goal scorer, the likes of which never seen before, and probably since.

 

[Mazatt]

Picking 20th isn't exciting for Valji, and doesn't generate clicks. So no matter what happens, if the Flames don't go scorched earth to try to draft the chosen one 3 years in a row, he will see it as wrong method. That's it.
Meanwhile, Dallas, cup finals in 2020, dangerous this year:
Robertson 2nd round
Hintz 2nd round
Benn 5th round
Pavelski 7th round
Seguin - acquired in trade.
Oettinger - late first

Boston, the best season of all time
Pastrnak 26th overall
Marchand 2nd round
Bergeron 2nd round
Krejci 2nd round
Lindholm - acquired in trade
McAvoy - mid first
Hall - UFA
Ullmark UFA
Coyle -acquired in trade
Zacha - Acquired in trade etc. etc.

All this is proving is that with competent coaching alongside pro and amateur scouting, a team can be built without the use of top picks. That is an insane anomaly and the recent drafts of the Flames give no hope to get close to those heights. Especially when one of Dallas' most important players is Heiskanen, who they got at 3rd overall.

But how does that all disprove a culture of mediocrity? The Flames haveone full-time pro-scout--good luck getting Coyle, Zacha, Seguin, Lindholm, Hall, and Ullmark without the staff to actually find them and trade lesser parts for better players. Or how about their amateur scouting? They haven't found any players like Robertson/MacAvoy etc. arguably in nearly a decade. They've made the odd good pick in Andersson, Kylington, Mangiapane that have current roster impacts but they also take Topi Ronni 59 when Lane Hutson goes 62 (someone just about anyone could've told you would be great).

It's one thing to say that teams can get by and contend without the use of high picks via savvy drafting, trades, and FA. The issue is that the Flames aren't nearly invested in enough front office capabilities to accomplish that feat. That's where the mediocrity settles in. The Flames are playing in a Canadian market, with a shit rink, shit facilities, and a barren front office with a lacking ability to assess NHL talent (both on their team and others) or draft the stars necessary to contend in the ways of the teams you mention. Being consistently dangerous (and that's the key here) in the playoffs takes a lot of planning and commitment outside.


The mediocrity that people are missing isn't that the Flames haven't ever had good seasons, cause clearly they have, it's that they aren't ever primed to take advantage of them and continually stomp on their own toes whenever they do make a good move.

 

[Kranix]

Or how about their amateur scouting? They haven't found any players like Robertson/MacAvoy etc. arguably in nearly a decade.

Few teams have.

They've made the odd good pick in Andersson, Kylington, Mangiapane that have current roster impacts but they also take Topi Ronni 59 when Lane Hutson goes 62 (someone just about anyone could've told you would be great).

I'd say the jury is still out on careers of two recent second round picks who haven't played an NHL game yet.

The mediocrity that people are missing isn't that the Flames haven't ever had good seasons, cause clearly they have, it's that they aren't ever primed to take advantage of them and continually stomp on their own toes whenever they do make a good move.

This is your concoction. The 'planned mediocrity' being declared by fans, Valji and Eric Francis( who would very much like everyone to forget how much he doused Treliving in praise for the Tkachuk trade last summer) is that the flames, since 1989, haven't ever said "let's plan to be bad for 5 years, so we can get our Crosby, Malkin, Ovechkin, Kane"

 

[Mazatt]

Few teams have.

So this is a really interesting point to make following saying that's the path to being competetive without tanking. If very few teams can actually get those players in the later rounds, and players who can be legit 1st liners for a decade + are generally concentrated in the top 10ish picks (wiggle room just cause I know someone will say "actually there was an 11th overall that was very good in 1962"), does that not support that getting out of the mediocrity would require tanking and consistently taking top picks to succeed? Where instead of playing the low odds of getting Robertson/MacAvoy/Hintz, you instead have a very good chance to take impactful players?

I'd say the jury is still out on careers of two recent second round picks who haven't played an NHL game yet.

Right, Ronni could pan out and Hutson could fall off a cliff. But I'd still much rather have the guy approaching Fox level NCAA numbers instead of Ronni, even if it's just a year out of the draft.

This is your concoction. The 'planned mediocrity' being declared by fans, Valji and Eric Francis( who would very much like everyone to forget how much he doused Treliving in praise for the Tkachuk trade last summer) is that the flames, since 1989, haven't ever said "let's plan to be bad for 5 years, so we can get our Crosby, Malkin, Ovechkin, Kane"

So I re-read the article just to be sure of this. The main throughpoint is that "Calgary refuses to rebuild, which is bad. They need to reassess how they integrate youth and how they approach planning" (vague but that's my interpretation). Frankly the teams president saying he "can't use the word rebuild" should be a pretty massive red flag that yes, this is planned mediocrity because the Flames are exceedingly comfortable being the 13th-16th team in the playoffs, only spend to the cap but don't spend to build on the actual organization, and can't look past the short-term loss of a rebuild vs. the long-term gain of an actual competitive roster. All of the good work performed in the past decade is being unravelled due to that fact. Most teams ebb and flow with competitive or poor seasons but an absolute unravelling like this is a sign for a rebuild to be necessary, but instead they're just hoping to get lucky and keep skirting on by

 

[Ace Rimmer]

Picking 20th isn't exciting for Valji, and doesn't generate clicks. So no matter what happens, if the Flames don't go scorched earth to try to draft the chosen one 3 years in a row, he will see it as wrong method. That's it.

Even if the Flames went scorched earth rebuild, he (and Francis) would subject us to articles like "Why are the Flames so bad?" and "The Flames should try winning for a change." etc.

 

[Kranix]

It's also funny that under Darryl Sutter, Valji claims playing the youth would have lead to more wins and playoffs, but the season was a failure, No playoffs = bad! But at the same time, according to Valji, and fans, playing youth is also supposed to lead to tanking, which is good!

You should be picking 32nd with a ring, or 1st! Anything in between is planned mediocrity!!

 

[Some Other Flame]

Clearly the only path forward here is to do nothing, change nothing, and most importantly, try nothing because the Flames as an organization are beyond reproach and their vast history of unparalleled success speaks to that.

Remember kids, aim low. Why try to be the best when you can just be irrelevant. That's so much better. Instead of trying to replicate the success of actual cup winners and follow their footsteps, it's better to stick with just being better than Arizona. That should be enough for everyone.

 

[Anglesmith]

This is your concoction. The 'planned mediocrity' being declared by fans, Valji and Eric Francis( who would very much like everyone to forget how much he doused Treliving in praise for the Tkachuk trade last summer) is that the flames, since 1989, haven't ever said "let's plan to be bad for 5 years, so we can get our Crosby, Malkin, Ovechkin, Kane"

Yes, but that's essentially exactly what they did in 2013. It just didn't go that way because the young players gelled so fast.

 

[Kranix]

Yes, but that's essentially exactly what they did in 2013. It just didn't go that way because the young players gelled so fast.

And they were universally praised for winning that playoff round against Vancouver, when everyone thought it was the beginning of the dark ages, before the multi-1OA studded Oilers had accomplished anything.
Signing hudler to simply have somebody to play wing was seen as genius, and not planned mediocrity

 

[Iggys Dome]

These are my thoughts on this whole thing:

2 division wins in the last 9 years does not make up for being out of the first round three times in 34 years. This is not a model organization for success by any means.

Since 1989:

Edmonton has been past the first round 8 times.
LA has been past the first round 7 times.
San Jose has been past the first round 14 times.
Anahaeim has been past the first round 8 times.
Vancouver has been past the first round 9 times.
Arizona has been past the first round once.
Seattle-TBD.

That's just the pacific division, we have the second lowest amount of playoff round wins (only more than Arizona, lol). A couple 50 win seasons don't mean jack shit, what really matters is playoff success. And this organization wouldn't know playoff success if it hit them in the ass.

This is mediocrity. Spending up to the cap doesn't make up for it, not one bit. Our front office seems very insular and intolerant of criticism judging from how John Bean reacted to Vadji's questions. We must expect more and demand more from this f***ing organization. Not making the playoffs this year was a critical failure, and I'm more than okay with cleaning house on all fronts. What this organization lacks is Pro talent evaluators, and leaders that know how to win (funny enough, Darryl is one of the few people in this org that knows what it takes).

Consistent playoff appearances should be the bare minimum for an organization that spends nearly to the cap every year, and we can't even manage to do that. This should be incredibly concerning as a fan.

 

[Jersey Fan 12]

So this is a really interesting point to make following saying that's the path to being competetive without tanking. If very few teams can actually get those players in the later rounds, and players who can be legit 1st liners for a decade + are generally concentrated in the top 10ish picks (wiggle room just cause I know someone will say "actually there was an 11th overall that was very good in 1962"), does that not support that getting out of the mediocrity would require tanking and consistently taking top picks to succeed? Where instead of playing the low odds of getting Robertson/MacAvoy/Hintz, you instead have a very good chance to take impactful players?


Right, Ronni could pan out and Hutson could fall off a cliff. But I'd still much rather have the guy approaching Fox level NCAA numbers instead of Ronni, even if it's just a year out of the draft.


So I re-read the article just to be sure of this. The main throughpoint is that "Calgary refuses to rebuild, which is bad. They need to reassess how they integrate youth and how they approach planning" (vague but that's my interpretation). Frankly the teams president saying he "can't use the word rebuild" should be a pretty massive red flag that yes, this is planned mediocrity because the Flames are exceedingly comfortable being the 13th-16th team in the playoffs, only spend to the cap but don't spend to build on the actual organization, and can't look past the short-term loss of a rebuild vs. the long-term gain of an actual competitive roster. All of the good work performed in the past decade is being unravelled due to that fact. Most teams ebb and flow with competitive or poor seasons but an absolute unravelling like this is a sign for a rebuild to be necessary, but instead they're just hoping to get lucky and keep skirting on by

Has there been any talk of Ronni being selected in next month's CHL Import Draft or is he staying in Finland?

 

[Ace Rimmer]

 

[Kahvi]

Has there been any talk of Ronni being selected in next month's CHL Import Draft or is he staying in Finland?

No idea, but I googled a bit and there's been rumours that he'd move from Tappara to Pelicans next year, most likely to get more ice time.

 

[Some Other Flame]

Where's the sad emoji

 

[Nanuuk]

Gotta say, it's nice to finally have a reporter covering the Flames with the spine to say it like it is

Salim Valji: Calgary Flames ownership must commit to overhauling culture of mediocrity | TSN

After a season full of red flags, Calgary’s ownership and front office need to seriously reflect on how they run the franchise and connect with the fanbase, Salim Valji writes.

www.tsn.ca

Cue the mass denial and attacks on Valji for doing his job

Valiji has been a speculative jerk since his arrival. I don't put any stock into anything he says.

 

[Kranix]

I wish Snoop Dogg was buying the Flames.