So you lose trades to get a better 2021 pick and the Flames try to stack Seattle by making other teams expose better players than trey traded for and screw over Edmonton? I am confused by what you want to do unless you think the Canadian division lasts past this season. If the other teams get our good players for cheap, they can just expose them without much of a worry.
To clarify, my hope is that this isn't plan A. But Treliving is a bit of a contrarian at times and can extract good value that way. He has no issues trading interconference if the price is the best and he has no issues with RFA negotiations which many other GMs hate. By moving towards those types of assets, he can often extract a bit better value in those types of trades.
Before this idea goes through, IMO I'd be aiming for a quantity for quality trade (ie: Eichel etc.). If that isn't happening and we aren't expecting great things from this roster anyways and need to reset, do it early and try and take advantage of unique circumstances price wise etc. for the 2021-2022 seasons/ED/UFA etc.
Another facet that I've noticed lately is that with the improvement of our drafting, you guys are going nuts over trading 3rd and 4th round picks. Those are scratch cards! But seriously, Button knows how to use those well with Treliving's mandate. The concept of those trades were usually something for nothing and basically a sort of moneyball for NHL games played.
ie: Kanzig for Lack; Lack for Prout; Sieloff for Chiasson; Knight for Shore.
In reverse to address log jams...
ie: Baertschi for pick; Granlund for Shink
The idea isn't to take a loss for the sake of taking a loss. It's 2-3 steps back for 2.5+ steps or more forward. It's aiming to move certain pieces first and then hope to recoup more assets later on to end up with more value than when we started. Kinda like obliterating the team to look kinda like Ottawa/Vancouver, some teams may have no issues trading us a Schmidt for a 3rd situation because they aren't scared of us. But with the roster we have currently, they won't make such trades with us.
Trading within Canada has its advantages right now and that advantage is temporary. If Treliving can extract extra value that way via expediting talent to current Canadian rosters, that might be very valuable, especially if he targets 2022 or 2023 draft picks that may become more valuable once things get back to normal. Trading to teams like Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa is also temporarily trading in division, but long term, once realignment happens, those guys are out of division.
The risk is that Seattle becomes stronger with better talent exposed to them if we do this, but likely, many teams will prefer to try and deal with each other to reduce that happening. That's where we are one of the weakest teams and teams might do the Schmidt for a 3rd trade to us rather than watch Seattle come out and contend for the cup in year 1. That's the gamble and that's the real play where we aim to increase our value than what we are sitting on now. Imagine we gut our team and have barely anything in the pipeline remotely close to blue chip and A level prospects (graduate everyone) for the next few seasons. Teams won't worry about us. But if we have a stockpile of currency in the 2022 and 2023 drafts when there's a serious chance of us possibly nabbing some superstar calibre talent in those drafts. Other options might be teams cashing out a good player for cheap to us to sign Hall or Hamilton because we are weak(er) than the average team.
The aim is for us to do something like this:
2021
- Bottom 2-3 in the Canadian division. (We already here)
2022
- Bottom middle pack in the Pacific division
- VGK
- Seattle
- Edmonton
- LA/Calgary/Vancouver
- Sharks/Ducks
2023
- Bubble for Western conference/Cinderella Sutter?
2024+ Contention for 3-5 year window? (Who's the coach?)
The concept is a bigger picture cross linking of concepts that many other posters have contrived. Some are stuck between retool/rebuild and I'm saying because of the Seattle expansion, there might be a unique opportunity where we legit can say, "why not both?" and end up succeeding at both and completely overhaul our roster in a great way, while also restocking our cupboards till they overflow.
