Speculation: What if the Flames actually got O'Reilly back in the lockout season?

[Anglesmith]

Berra was Burke not Feaster.

My bad. Weird how I remember that deal being under Feaster.

I am not sure how his mistakes have had less long term implications than Trelivings when we haven't really seen any poor implications of Trelivings yet.

Yes, we have. We've seen a buyout on Mason Raymond that is still impacting our salary cap this year, for instance.

I think, at the end of the day, Feaster performed exactly what his role was. I think he was hired specifically to take the team through the harsh transition into a rebuild, and being completely objective, Feaster set the team up for a rebuild better than a lot of teams have done around the league. I feel like he inherited an impossible situation, and made the best out of it. Only thing that would have made it better would have been if Burke had managed to actually get a return for Cammalleri.

I think the worst thing about his tenure is the negative press. He definitely could have kept a lower profile as he went about his work. Perhaps without the bluster, his work would be looked upon in a more positive light.

 

[CraigsList]

The Bouwmeester trade alone would solidify Feaster as a horrendous GM. A top pairing defenceman under contract for another year given away for essentially, a conditional late first.

It was an absolute joke of a trade and it's amazing how much that terrible return is swept under the rug.

Burke salvaged things a bit by getting a 2nd for Berra, but even then, the whole sequence was embarrassing.

Wasn't it rumored that Detroit offered up Tatar and Nyquist, but Feaster wanted a 1st?

 

[Mobiandi]

Feaster never had a plan for this team. Other than ok drafting, he was only gonna drag us further down by thinking about tomorrow and not next year. Abysmal GM

 

[Fig]

That Bouwmeester trade was bad, we essentially traded a lowend 1D/elite 2D for nothing. Why didn't we move up to pick Forsberg when the 11th overall pick was available seeing how GMGM essentially traded him for a failed Erat rental? Why didn't we get Iginla and Kipper moved sooner and maximum return? The best player he picked was Gaudreau.

I'd put money on ownership meddling. We've been hearing about King in the Treliving era. I'm honestly curious if Feaster is a puppet in the same way Benning is to the Aquilinis.

Both are below average GMs whose performance goes lower when they bow to the stupid wants of a higher level manager.

Feaster never had a plan for this team. Other than ok drafting, he was only gonna drag us further down by thinking about tomorrow and not next year. Abysmal GM

This is huge and I've never thought about it, but it's true. Feaster targeted guys like ROR and Richards. He gave away pieces for decent future packages, then acquired nothing for those futures. I honestly think he saw our roster, put a label on players, then decided he needed to fill gaps without evaluating chemistry.

I think he was as bad a GM as people think.

The two best things people can point to him doing were Gaudreau and Monahan two guys in which it is very debatable how much picking them was due to smart GMing and how much was luck (Gaudreau) and the obvious choice (Monahan).

I guess the Hudler deal worked out for the first few years but the last year it was brutal. The Wideman deal was awful. Ramo as a starter was bad. Cerevenka didn't work out. The last two made worse by Feasters constant need to overhype his moves/players.

He badly read this team and held on to guys way to long, then dealt them for really terrible returns.

Plus he lucked out on two of what would have been awful moves the ROR offer sheet and Richards deal were stopped do to nothing of his own doing.

Then looking at how he conducted himself from the "best player in the draft" Jankowski, to intellectual honesty, to watch what we will do and then doing nothing, best player outside of the NHL, best goalie outside of the NHL, it just got embarrassing to have to see him continue to spew this nonsense.

He blabbed a lot. Yeah. But keep these things in mind.

- Ramo wasn't bad for what we paid for him.
- Wideman wasn't too bad, but when you add a bunch of slow D, you get in trouble (Smid, Wideman etc.). 5x5 + NMC was dumb.
- His trade for Kotalik was idiotic. Which was why we had to lose so many value on Regehr to get rid of him.
- Cervenka was perhaps as scouting issue. We thought he was a C. He was a winger. But we played him at C anyways. He had blood clot issues, but still put up around .5PPG with poor health and playing the wrong role.
- You can put Gaudreau as his success because he listened to his scouts. But you can also consider he changed the drafting focus to focus on skill and character vs size and speed as Sutter had done before.
-Hudler's deal was not one of his worst. Commenting about that is weird. He was our only legit RW after Iggy left.

To a certain extent, I think most of Feaster's failures were huge snowballs after ROR and Richards failures. I also think he was given a mandate to be competitive by King and Co. which is why the rebuild was delayed so long.

 

[SmellOfVictory]

That Bouwmeester trade was bad, we essentially traded a lowend 1D/elite 2D for nothing. Why didn't we move up to pick Forsberg when the 11th overall pick was available seeing how GMGM essentially traded him for a failed Erat rental? Why didn't we get Iginla and Kipper moved sooner and maximum return? The best player he picked was Gaudreau.

Do you recall how people viewed JBo when he was with Calgary? He was the biggest whipping boy this team has had in years. "JBlow sucks. JBlow has no offence. JBlow is soft." No fan anywhere called him an "elite 2D", and I don't think anyone in league management would have, either. He had a 7 million dollar cap hit that the Flames ownership refused to retain any portion of, as well.

The return wasn't great, this is true. But JBo as a 7 million dollar trade chip who didn't perform to expectations in Calgary doesn't strike me as an outrageously valuable trade asset.

As far as Forsberg, I don't know that Calgary had anything Washington wanted. I recall hearing that nobody would give more than like a 3rd round pick for Cammalleri at the time.

 

[Baxterman]

I have a real hard time believing that Bouwmeester went from being not valued by NHL management to top 6 defenseman on one of the best teams ever assembled in 9 months (and only ~6 months of playing).

I think this is a clear case of fans letting their bias get in the way of rational evaluation and I doubt that GM's from other teams were doing that.

 

[Bjornar Moxnes]

Do you recall how people viewed JBo when he was with Calgary? He was the biggest whipping boy this team has had in years. "JBlow sucks. JBlow has no offence. JBlow is soft." No fan anywhere called him an "elite 2D", and I don't think anyone in league management would have, either. He had a 7 million dollar cap hit that the Flames ownership refused to retain any portion of, as well.

The return wasn't great, this is true. But JBo as a 7 million dollar trade chip who didn't perform to expectations in Calgary doesn't strike me as an outrageously valuable trade asset.

As far as Forsberg, I don't know that Calgary had anything Washington wanted. I recall hearing that nobody would give more than like a 3rd round pick for Cammalleri at the time.

I meant at the draft, we had the 14th overall pick, Washington probably wanted a Russian to support Ovie, and we had other pieces as well. Heck I'd have gladly done Baertschi and 14th to move up to 11th and pick Forsberg. Washington may have accepted it.

 

[Mobiandi]

The return wasn't great, this is true. But JBo as a 7 million dollar trade chip who didn't perform to expectations in Calgary doesn't strike me as an outrageously valuable trade asset.

We could've retained. We could've waited a little longer seeing as he ended the season with a long stretch of very good play under his belt iirc. This was a ridiculously bad trade

 

[DFF]

JayB deal was fine. Even Iggy trade was ok considering.

Problem was they drafted garbage. That's more on Button than anything.

 

[Baxterman]

JayB deal was fine. Even Iggy trade was ok considering.

Problem was they drafted garbage. That's more on Button than anything.

No the deals weren't fine. They got a whole lot of question marks. 1st round picks in the 20's are far from sure things and unlikely to be top 6 forwards or top 4 d-men.

How they dealt Bouwmeester and Iginla and got zero quality pieces other than late 1st draft picks is pretty amazing. Those guys should have at least brought back one or two close to NHL ready prospects. Berra, Cundari, Hanowski and Agostino were all garbage prospects coming back.

When dealing guys of Iginla and Bouwmeester's quality you shouldn't have to hope you get lucky with the draft picks you are getting back.

 

[Johnny Hoxville]

I'm of the opinion that Feasters trade record on its own was poor enough to label him as a 'Bad GM'. Add in the public blunders he suffered. I don't think he will ever be remembered all that fondly.

His amateur scouting team did some really great things, but that is about the only positive thing I can say about his tenure.

This is exactly how I feel.

 

[CraigsList]

JayB deal was fine. Even Iggy trade was ok considering.

Problem was they drafted garbage. That's more on Button than anything.

No they were not. We could have easily received more at least with the JBo trade because at least that was the one we controlled where he went. Iggy just chose the Pens over the Bruins, but he had that right.

 

[DFF]

No they were not. We could have easily received more at least with the JBo trade because at least that was the one we controlled where he went. Iggy just chose the Pens over the Bruins, but he had that right.

Well OK....I still think the bigger problem was they chose the garbage prospects and screwed up on the pick.

 

[Johnny Hoxville]

Both deals were quite poor. The fact that Iggy didn't give his list and the fact that he even had a list and it was made public, is all on Feaster. The fact that limited his ability was Feaster being a lawyer and trying to limit the PR damage. Feaster/Wiesbrod also had a thing for guys like Byron, Ramo, Cervenka and Cundari. These guys were always trying to find diamonds in the rough instead of going for known quality. They were bad deals, Burke essentially said the same when he was fired.

 

[Johnny GODreau]

hindsight being 20/20 we should've kept both Jbo and Iggy. We should've moved Jbo at the draft, maybe in a package for Seguin.

 

[Baxterman]

Well OK....I still think the bigger problem was they chose the garbage prospects and screwed up on the pick.

Judging a deal on who was taken with the pick and not what the picks expected value would be is a pretty poor way to judge deals.

Using that method trading Bouma for the 1st overall pick would be a terrible move if you then drafted Matt Pelech with that 1st pick. Likewise trading Crosby for 2 4ths would be great if you then drafted Gaudreau and Benn with those picks.


I think we can both agree that trading Crosby for 2 4ths would be moronic and, as much as I love him, Bouma for the 1st overall would be fairly great.

 

[Johnny Hoxville]

Judging a deal on who was taken with the pick and not what the picks expected value would be is a pretty poor way to judge deals.

Using that method trading Bouma for the 1st overall pick would be a terrible move if you then drafted Matt Pelech with that 1st pick. Likewise trading Crosby for 2 4ths would be great if you then drafted Gaudreau and Benn with those picks.


I think we can both agree that trading Crosby for 2 4ths would be moronic and, as much as I love him, Bouma for the 1st overall would be fairly great.

I mean, he's not wrong. The Flames would have consulted their scouting staff (at least I hope) prior to making both deal. It was made public that a roster player, prospect and 1st rounder were necessary pieces for both deals. The 1st's were likely a mandate based on intell from their scouting staff who obviously loved Poirier. Burakovsky was taken immediately after.

In a vacuum it's fine to judge a deal based on assets, but in the real world a team is judged on performance and what is done with said assets. Ramo could have been had for a 5th round pick or whatever late pick the Flames wanted to part with. The Blues had no intention of ever bringing him over and Cundari was an AHL player.

If that Detroit deal was actually on the deal, Feaster made a massive mistake for passing on it just to stick to his mandate on getting specific assets. Quality should always trump quantity. His only deal I really liked was the Erixon one.

 

[Fig]

JayB deal was fine. Even Iggy trade was ok considering.

Problem was they drafted garbage. That's more on Button than anything.

How could Button have done better?

The late 2013 first round talent was REALLY bad. Look at what was drafted in that range. Picks 15 to 40 are abysmal in comparison to other drafts. And yet, we have 4 of those players!

- Lazar
- Shinkaruk
- Klimchuk*
- Poirier*

The remainder are just barely getting into the league now. Most of them struggling to hold a consistent place on an NHL roster. Button cannot make something out of nothing.

Second, Button's ability to scout IMO isn't problematic. He and his team scout players, then rank attributes. Most of what I've seen is that the GM outlines requirements on players, and then the scouts lists are reorganized based on different weighting.

Sutter seemingly drafted based on the following criteria: Tall > Strong > Fast
Feaster got rid of Sutter's failures and seemingly drafted based on the following criteria: Skill > IQ > Speed
Treliving seemingly drafts based on: IQ > Skill > Character

If you look closely, each year's draft has a theme that is chosen by the GM. Button has been able to do quite well in the later rounds. Another way to look at it is like this, Button doesn't randomly submit a "BPA" name when our pick comes up. The GM walks up and say, "Hey, I want to draft a fridge. Got a name for me?" and Button offers his selection based on that criteria. Or "Hey, I want a swing for the fences skill pick or a goalie." he offers a name.

We know the lists differ significantly from GM to GM, but also from organization to organization. This is known because we know Button/Feaster tried to hide their interest in Kucherov and Gaudreau. There's articles about how they didn't even internally rank them and merely kept them as wild cards. Read the article below.


Now keep in mind, when Sutter signed as GM, our scouting was woefully bad due to it being horribly under developed. Barely any resources were put into scouting. Sutter's drafting wasn't great, but he knew he needed to improve scouting. IIRC he doubled scouting before he left, but most of the scouting was all in the WHL. Feaster added more scouts, but also focused on overseas as well as college.

Button has also done reasonably well with seasons where Sutter traded away all the picks as well as the Dougie Hamilton year where Treliving did the same. Now, Treliving has moved out many, many picks. Button has an interesting job in front of him. I really hope Treliving gives Button more freedom.

No I am not related to Button. These articles do offer insight into Button's strategy and also leans credence to the idea that the GM can really mess with player ranking.

https://flamesnation.ca/2012/05/15/the-curious-case-of-tod-button/

http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports...ohnny+Gaudreau+2011+draft/10203624/story.html

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/the-draft-day-story-of-johnny-gaudreau/

 

[Volica]

I still am surprised there are folks who view Feaster as any bit of a competent GM. The guy couldn't win a trade to save his life... He had a total of one major win (Cammy/Ramo trade) and the rest were 'meh' to 'what the **** is this guy doing?'.

He was shortsighted as they come; making moves to just try and squeeze into the playoffs to save his job. His UFA signings were pretty lacklustre, giving way too much term in most cases (keep in mind, in another world, we're buying our Brad Richards contract or it's still on the books here )

I give him some credit drafting; getting Gaudreau was the best value at that draft. Other than that, /shrug.

 

[Ace Rimmer]

Trading wasn't Feaster's issue, actually. I'm struggling to think of a trade that was awful, and the worst ones i can think of are Pierre Luc-Lewhatever for a 5th and Modin for a 7th.

A couple of notable wins were the Erixon trade, the Regehr trade (in hindsight, and had they kept Byron around) and trading Langkow for Stempniak.

His most egregious errors were not getting Iggy to waive his NMC in writing. Maybe. The return was as underwhelming as it was from Pittsburgh however and wouldn't have changed much if anything, in hindsight. In fact, the 1st round pick from Boston may have been lower than Pittsburgh's - making it potentially a lesser return. The ROR offer sheet may have also been a problem; as a lawyer it was probably this move that cost him his job and his reputation (even though I believe the worst that would have happened is ROR would have been deemed ineligible to compete that season)

If the worst trades in a GM's tenure are poor value for two late draft picks, or trading our garbage for another team's garbage, that's not too bad.

 

[Baxterman]

Trading wasn't Feaster's issue, actually. I'm struggling to think of a trade that was awful, and the worst ones i can think of are Pierre Luc-Lewhatever for a 5th and Modin for a 7th.

A couple of notable wins were the Erixon trade, the Regehr trade (in hindsight, and had they kept Byron around) and trading Langkow for Stempniak.

His most egregious errors were not getting Iggy to waive his NMC in writing. Maybe. The return was as underwhelming as it was from Pittsburgh however and wouldn't have changed much if anything, in hindsight. In fact, the 1st round pick from Boston may have been lower than Pittsburgh's - making it potentially a lesser return. The ROR offer sheet may have also been a problem; as a lawyer it was probably this move that cost him his job and his reputation (even though I believe the worst that would have happened is ROR would have been deemed ineligible to compete that season)

If the worst trades in a GM's tenure are poor value for two late draft picks, or trading our garbage for another team's garbage, that's not too bad.

His worst trades were the Iginla and Bouwmeester trades, how did you just ignore those two deals?

And no the Regehr deal was not a good one in hindsight. Getting a player that had a to take a 1 year minimum deal and was waived through 28 teams in the league and only picked up because a guy got a DUI a week before the season is not a good return for a guy like Regehr who 2 years later returned 2 2nd round picks. Throw in the fact we gave up a 2nd to get rid of Kotalik who just went to Europe and that deal was a bad deal for the Flames.

 

[Anglesmith]

Trading wasn't Feaster's issue, actually. I'm struggling to think of a trade that was awful, and the worst ones i can think of are Pierre Luc-Lewhatever for a 5th and Modin for a 7th.

A couple of notable wins were the Erixon trade, the Regehr trade (in hindsight, and had they kept Byron around) and trading Langkow for Stempniak.

His most egregious errors were not getting Iggy to waive his NMC in writing. Maybe. The return was as underwhelming as it was from Pittsburgh however and wouldn't have changed much if anything, in hindsight. In fact, the 1st round pick from Boston may have been lower than Pittsburgh's - making it potentially a lesser return. The ROR offer sheet may have also been a problem; as a lawyer it was probably this move that cost him his job and his reputation (even though I believe the worst that would have happened is ROR would have been deemed ineligible to compete that season)

If the worst trades in a GM's tenure are poor value for two late draft picks, or trading our garbage for another team's garbage, that's not too bad.

It's true. It's mostly the non-moves that colour people's perception of him in hindsight. And in fact, perhaps his most controversial move (taking Jankowski) is looking like a great decision right about now.

He had bad moves, but I don't think there's any GM who doesn't. Even Treliving has built a pretty formidable list of bad moves since his start here, but that doesn't make him a bad GM. I think Feaster was a big step up from Sutter, whose mistakes actually had long-term repercussions. At this current moment, I'm happy we have Treliving at the helm, because of the improved team image.

 

[Baxterman]

He wasn't close to a big step up on Sutter who helped build a team that went to the finals and was a controversial goal away from winning and still has as much, if not more, of an impact (positively) on our current team that Feaster does.

As for the Jankowski pick way to early to say it looks good let alone great. After the original pick we had the picks were- Ceci, Wilson, Hertl, Teravainen, Vaislevsky. Now they could have turned out differently but all those guys would have been huge additions to our team over the past few years and outside of Wilson I think it is doubtful that Jankowski turns out better than them. The next two picks after Jankowski were Maata and Matheson who again look like two very useful picks and probably guys that will end up better than Jankowski.

So right now it can't look like anything other than a bad choice and going forward Jankowski will have to really be a good player for it to seem like a good move let alone great move.

 

[Anglesmith]

He wasn't close to a big step up on Sutter who helped build a team that went to the finals and was a controversial goal away from winning and still has as much, if not more, of an impact (positively) on our current team that Feaster does.

As for the Jankowski pick way to early to say it looks good let alone great. After the original pick we had the picks were- Ceci, Wilson, Hertl, Teravainen, Vaislevsky. Now they could have turned out differently but all those guys would have been huge additions to our team over the past few years and outside of Wilson I think it is doubtful that Jankowski turns out better than them. The next two picks after Jankowski were Maata and Matheson who again look like two very useful picks and probably guys that will end up better than Jankowski.

So right now it can't look like anything other than a bad choice and going forward Jankowski will have to really be a good player for it to seem like a good move let alone great move.

Sutter didn't really build the team that went to the finals; that was 90% Craig Button. He was a great coach. And I and most Flames fans wish he'd remained as the coach. But his work as a GM was not only bad, it was bad enough to hamper the GM who followed him significantly. Feaster ended up taking over a team loaded with NMCs and NTCs and devoid of any prospects.

Also, I have no idea why you would say Jankowski is unlikely to be better than any of those players. None of them is a significant impact player other than Vasilevskiy. I would say that best player in the draft is probably out of reach, but there's no reason he can't be better than all of those guys.

 

[Baxterman]

Sutter didn't really build the team that went to the finals; that was 90% Craig Button. He was a great coach. And I and most Flames fans wish he'd remained as the coach. But his work as a GM was not only bad, it was bad enough to hamper the GM who followed him significantly. Feaster ended up taking over a team loaded with NMCs and NTCs and devoid of any prospects.

Button? Button didn't bring in Iginla or Kiprusoff who were by far the two best players on that team. As with most teams in hockey it was a combination because guys just aren't in the GM spot long enough to have total control over how a team was built. But Sutter bringing in Kiprusoff and the pieces duirng the season certainly was a key part of the team going to the finals rather than being out in the 1st round.

Also the currently has Gio, Brodie and Backlund thanks to Sutter. Those are 3 of the top 5 (maybe even top 4) important pieces to the team.

He left Feaster with great trade pieces in Iginla, Bouwmeester, Regehr and Kipper. Just because Feaster bungled those trades doesn't change the value that was there.

Also, I have no idea why you would say Jankowski is unlikely to be better than any of those players. None of them is a significant impact player other than Vasilevskiy. I would say that best player in the draft is probably out of reach, but there's no reason he can't be better than all of those guys.

Ceci is a top 4 defenseman on a play-off team, Hertl was a top 6 center on multiple play-off teams, Wilson as I said is debatable but does play a key role for a good Washington team, Maata was a key defenseman (maybe top pairing) for the Pens when they won the Cup and Matheson is playing top 3 minutes for Florida and has represented Canada (although at WHC, i know).

So to be better than those guys Jankowski is going to have to be a decent top 6 guy which is possible but I wouldn't say likely.