That's a lot of change. Time for Treliving to settle down and let the roster gel for a while.
Line Combos: 2018/19 Roster Discussion
- Thread starter Johnny Hoxville
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Zirakzigil
Global Moderator
Love the attitude Lazar showed today. That’s exactly what you hope to get from a player and rarely do.
Lunatik
Registered User
- Oct 12, 2012
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Definitely and as an aside, if another team sees that attitude, they will be more willing to acquire him and give him a chance to redeem himself too. Not that he has much value, but I think we could get something now; maybe even a pair of AHLers
King In The North
Sean Bennett
Definitely. Looking back, there were just a lot of spare parts on that team.
I understood the changes from the 2014 - 2015 team where he wanted to add veterans but they really slowed this team down.
- Jan 9, 2009
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I guess we'll see at 11:00 AM who's left on the roster if Treliving hasn't made an announcement by then. Flames have to announce their 23 player roster by 3:00 PM. However he's being interviewed by Fan960 @ 1:00 PM so I'm making the assumption the announcement will be made before 1:00.
- Jan 9, 2009
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Took my wife an hour and a half to drive to work this morning. Normally takes 45 minutes to drive from Okotoks to Temple area. She said Stoney trail was a crawl at 10 kph for most of the way. She was glad she took the 4x4 Jeep Rubicon instead of her van.
Roads are an absolute mess. It's taken me 2 and a half hrs to get to the ctrain station and probably gonna take another hour on the bus just to get to the core. Wishing everyone the best out there, but this is just classic Calgary weather.
Fig
Absolute Horse Shirt
- Dec 15, 2014
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Need more gellin
Except for whoever is isn't working out and trying too hard to "gelling". I've often remarked that Treliving inherited a team that was supposed to be in the Connor McDavid sweepstakes. Whether it was ownership mandate that did not allow for a true rebuild, I do not know, but we went for ploffs. Treliving's "error" was not expecting significant growth from our farm team. That's not a true error, but the vet contracts were perhaps a bit long to allow the farm hands to graduate. He has since learned from that mistake and has structured the team in a way to allow for approximately 1-2 farm hands to graduate every year. But as any rookie GM or other GM, you'd expect the team to suck if you had something that was at the time IMO worse than what Vancouver is today. Consider that Mony was a sophomore, Gaudreau was a rookie and nearly sent back down, Barts was still underachieving, we needed to hit the cap floor and had lost one of our best players in Cammellari to FA so we were leaning on guys like Raymond, Engelland, Stajan etc. Backlund was pre-mesh.
Some of those holes in the roster though, you have to have vets. Burke wanted Truculence because our team had been rag dolled and abused/exploited in the previous season. Add ownership meddling and crap for trade returns because Feaster was easy to exploit... not looking good. Our best RW at one point was Hudler and Jones. David freaking Jones was our best right shot RW and he was out of the league the year after his contract expired. We've been plugging holes with whatever we can find since then on the RHS forward front. Chiasson, Vey, Lazar, Forward Hamilton, Foo etc. Centre depth was abysmal as well. Mony was our 3C at the time and it was only due to injuries to Stajan and Backlund IIRC that put him in the 1C role. It was not expected that Mony would succeed there that young, but he did and he's our unquestionable 1C now with Gaudreau our unquestionable 1LW. But that roster was gross. Treliving walked into it looking at it like this:
Hudler - Stajan - Jones
Glencross - Backlund - X
X - Monahan - McGrattan
Bouma - Colborne - X
Byron
The centre depth info he had was essentially:
Stajan
Backlund (but often injured)
Monahan
Colborne/Bouma/Byron/Granlund/Arnold (many of which were poor choices as our 4C)
RHS RW depth:
Jones
McGrattan
Nothing
Defense wasn't set yet and was a mish mash of something like:
Gio - Wideman
Smid (oft injured) - Brodie
Russell - X
Diaz
I seem to recall it was only later in the season that Gio/Brodie was a pairing and Russell/Wideman a pairing.
Farm: Baertschi (entitled; per Burke interview and Feaster management), Granlund, Gaudreau and the rest didn't really look ready such as Klimchuk, Poirier, Wolf etc. I seem to recall Gaudreau was 3rd or 4th best prospect. I seem to recall our prospect pool was considered poor and relatively dry.
With hindsight, it's a different argument, but without it, it's a complete mess. Who the heck thinks that they'd make playoffs with such a roster? I'd argue comparatively to the league at that time, its far worse than any team out there right now comparative to the league now.
Jooris was a huge camp invite and he helped fill the RW void.
Setoguchi was an experiment to see if he could help.
Bollig brought in to be muscle to protect the kids along side McGrattan.
Raymond brought in to replace Cammellari
Engelland brought in to be our second RHS RD and a RW in a pinch.
Serious step ups:
- Colborne (Essentially sophomore)
- Bouma (Sophomore)
- Granlund (rookie)
- Jooris (rookie)
- Engelland (New to team)
- Gaudreau (rookie)
- Brodie/Russell/Wideman (d depth beyond this was abysmal)
That season was a season of misfits who decided to go on a rampage. That roster was weak as hell, injured as fack and did a lot of damage. I honestly think a huge reason for the step back the season after was the fact the players were drained and still dealing with injuries. Add in the fact a play book had been developed to neuter our game, that's probably why Hartley was fired with a year left to go the season after.
I think the fatal flaw with Gully is that he expected the team to self manage more than they were capable. Gully needs a room of vets to guide the kids. This situation on top of the fact that Hartley's system was paper thin meant that there was not a good structure in place to learn and set up the systems. Again, I really think Gully will be a coach for a long time. I think he's better than Torts. But at this point he needs to be given a vet laden cycle styled team. Maybe in the future he's better at developing players and teaching. But IMO his theory is sound. It's just the execution which is horrific.
Treliving has made improvements year after year. He's made mistakes, sure, but I don't ever feel like he makes the same mistakes over and over. This season IMO is the only true season where he's fixed the RW issue. Centre depth is also great and d depth is awesome. He has properly fixed every weakness from that 2014-2015 roster except for goalie. I expect he will be keeping his ears to the ground and will be getting far more aggressive on his goalie acquisition. If I recall correctly, he was quite convincing in wanting Murray at one point (someone many of us were like, "Who?" before he was trotted out and excelled), but the Pens weren't totally convinced and also wanted to see what they had in Murry at the NHL level. The rest is history as Murry usurped Fleury as the long term goaltender option. Other than that, I haven't heard much rumblings about Treliving in on goalies except Bishop whose acquisition was supposedly quashed not once, but at least twice by ownership (King) and as a result, Bishop had no interest in signing with us in FA. That being said, I am pretty sure Treliving was in on pretty much whoever was on the market. Even Elliott was a bit of a "who"? When acquired. Elliott didn't work out, but it was a pretty savvy move at the time.
I expect a serious deal to be swung for a goalie by next preseason, but man, I am excited for the puck to drop for reals this season. I tuned the frick out last season due to what was going on on the ice as well as personal reasons. But I am damn excited for 2018-2019.
BobColesNasalCavity
Registered User
Man no Andersson? I mean I like Valimaki and all but I wanted him in the A to play top line minutes instead of wasting away with Stone on the 3rd pairing. I really think Andersson can be good. Too bad.
- Jan 9, 2009
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Lunatik
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- Oct 12, 2012
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There is often going back after getting "real NHL numbers" Wotherspoon, Poirier, Shore, Foo, Peluso, Andersson... etc all got "real NHL numbers" the last few years and then never made the team or were sent down in short order.
Fig
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- Dec 15, 2014
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I'm still wondering if the plan is to give Valimaki <9 games (allows ELC to slide rather than burn a year) and then send him down and bring Andersson up. I don't think Valimaki stays beyond 9 games unless he is really ripping it up.
The Burke vanity number rule was removed just prior to Burke leaving IIRC. Bennett and Ferland were the first to "benefit" from this IIRC.
Kranix
Deranged Homer
- Jun 27, 2012
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Why? You don't think he's ready? If he flounders in the first bit they can send him right back down to Stockton.
Ace Rimmer
Stoke me a clipper.
Johnny Hoxville
The Return of a Legend
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