Huh? There were a lot of good moves, not just Gaudreau and Monahan. Under Feaster, the scouting really improved. Your analysis of the Hudler deal is really bizarre. That was a fantastic deal that never handcuffed us. The last year wasn't brutal- Hudler was a brutal, but we got a nice return for him, and his salary didn't restrict us when we needed space. Wideman's deal was a success from the perspective that he was a major factor in getting us back to the playoffs, but he did hurt us the last year, and that's kind of what you expect from a UFA signing.
I guess the Hudler deal never handcuffed us but that was a lot of money for one play-off trip. And really it never handcuffed us because the teams that Feaster built weren't good enough to care about salary. Wideman was terrible his whole time in Calgary. He was not a factor in getting us anywhere.
In terms of good trades, you can look at his ability to get a big return for Erixon with his back up against the wall, which was great. Getting Cammalleri and Ramo for the husk of Rene Bourque and a 2nd was an absolute steal. Getting a second for Reto Berra was a great move. There was plenty of good.
Big return for Erixon? Horak is out of the league and Wotherspoon appears he could never make it himself. I guess it was ok given the circumstances but not really a big return or anything that has improved the team.
Berra was Burke not Feaster.
The Cammy trade was ok at best. Ramo sucked badly, Cammy had decent offensive numbers but again on a team going nowhere. I think I would prefer to have the 2nd round pick out of all the pieces in that deal.
If you want to talk about those swings and misses, I would say his mistakes had lesser long-term implications than his successor's. Treliving has had the job for less time, but has made probably just as many poor signings, and has had to use buyouts along the way.
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.
What is clear about his long term impications is that we are now what 2-3 years out from his tenure and we have 2 pieces on our roster from him. The hit we took from not having depth or piece from his time in Calgary has really hurt and is the reason we have guys like Versteeg and Bartowski in the line-up and relied on a rookie to outperform his expectations.
Even the "terrible" Sutter years have produced a lot more of the basis of this current line-up. Feaster's long term implications are felt for sure with this team and they are negative.
That's such a weird analysis of what Feaster did. He took over the job with 13 billion NMCs on the team. He didn't really have any flexibility to start out with. Once the contracts started running out and he actually was able to move some, he did, and as has been repeatedly discussed and pointed out, he got fair market value for just about every trade. But in the preceding time, he wasn't sitting on his hands. Right from the start of his tenure, he made a lot of small moves to attempt to make the team younger and recoup some younger skilled players for cheap.
He took over a team that badly needed a rebuild and instead took another shot with them holding on to guys way too long and getting terrible returns for them.
He did not come close to getting full market value for what we could have got for Iginla if he moved him the year before. He got basically squat for Bouwmeester who played on team Canada a year after being dealt, played top pairing on a play-off team in St. Louis and had a year left on his deal.
And it's completely disingenuous to admonish him for moves which potentially could have been good, just because you've already assumed they wouldn't be.
I will admonish him because at the time the moves made zero sense. Risking losing the pick and ROR, even if it was a very small risk, certainly wasn't worth it to a. overpay O'Reilly on a short term deal and b. add O'Reilly to a bad team that needed to rebuild not reload. The O'Reilly offersheet made no sense based on the risk involved and the make-up of the roster. I also think it looks terrible in hindsight because I prefer Monahan over ROR but even without taking into account the things we don't know just looking at what we do know it was a bad deal.
I will start out saying I can't imagine how anyone can think that the Richards signing would have worked out well for this team but will say sure we don't know for sure that he would have fallen off the same cliff he did by going elsewhere.
But again in what world did the Flames team coming off a 3rd year in a row of blah hockey, desperately in need of some youth injection in the line-up, did it make sense to add Brad Richards with a monster 8 year 7-8 million dollar? Even if he played well that team going forward would have been mediocre at best. The signing didn't make sense even if Richards played well (which was unlikely) and a nightmare if he played poorly or just aged like would have been expected from a guy of his age.