The difference between Lucic and a decent value $4 million dollar player is huge. Lucic has 4th liner production at ES and his numbers only look palatable based on heavy PP time that he wouldn't be getting if the org wasn't trying to salvage this contract.
Not sure why Flames fans should be so concerned about a $2 million hit on the book for 6 seasons when their window to win will be closed by then. Much better than a $5 million dollar anchor during their best window to win during the next 2-3 seasons.
After that all of Gaudreau, Monahan, Tkachuk will be looking for huge raises and Giordano will be retired. They don't have anything in the pipeline coming along to fill in the gaps either.
Treliving made some good moves and also made a lot of win now moves, and then about faced and started playing cautious suddenly.
Either he's dumb or ownership is meddling.
Ownership has a mandate to not spend money for guys not to play for the Flames, so that is without a doubt part of it. Treliving had already bought out multiple other signings, so asking ownership to pay Neal for 8 years to not play for them would require significant justification. As soon as the deal for James Neal was signed, they had signed an anchor, so you have to start there as a basis. The Flames were exchanging one anchor for another anchor regardless. A buyout would've just made it a smaller anchor for longer.
I think you're way off on a few of your takes regarding the Flames; in particular that their window will be closed any time soon. Just based on the age of their core and the age of the next wave joining that core, there is no rebuild around the corner for a long time. This team has aspirations of being like Boston or St. Louis and being able to continually retool and reshuffle until they get the mix right. They may not have it right at the moment, but they also don't have any impending disaster coming to rob them of their ability to compete and keep working at it. Their cap situation went through a bottle-neck last summer in needing to sign Tkachuk, and now has breathing space to allow the cap ceiling to grow until they need it. The deal for Lucic was part of that, but wasn't their only way to address it, as you say. Every Troy Brouwer or James Neal move that Treliving pulls will hurt their ability to put together a contender, so for now it's up to him to navigate that. As for filling in the gaps, they have been doing that all along since the rebuild finished. They broke Dougie Hamilton into two younger players as a starter. Last year it was bringing Valimaki, Andersson and Mangiapane into the NHL and getting them some seasoning. This year, we've brought Dube and Kylington into the fold. I could go into the future, but of course that would be speculative. Obviously, if you ignore our prospects entirely, we have nothing in the pipeline. But more importantly, there aren't a lot of gaps in our organization where we don't have high-potential youth emerging, improving and pushing things forward.
Anyway, as you suggest, Lucic has produced over the course of the year in line with a fourth-liner. He also brings an added element of grit to the team which was identified at the end of last year as a team need in the wake of Ferland's departure. And no, I don't mean things like "answering the bell" and "enforcing the code," but rather just being heavy on the forecheck and making the other team hurt a bit in order to deal with his size in the corners. If you have a team full of Gaudreaus on the forecheck, your opponent is feeling pretty fresh in the third period. And beyond all of that, one of the most important things that contrasts Lucic with many other available, cheap players, is that Lucic has actually been an effective players possession-wise. He's also been on the ice for more goals for than against on a team with a double-digit negative goal differential. So when you wrap all that together, what $3.3M player (note, I realized that with the Flames paying Lucic only $5.25M and a buyout costing $1.95M, this is a more realistic figure) would help the Flames and be unarguably better, without costing the Flames anything else? I think it's harder to identify than you think. Before claiming that a certain price tag leads to a certain amount of production, use Ryan Reaves as a comparable. He signed a $5.5M contract with everyone knowing his scoring would be at fourth-liner rate because there is more to a player's value than just their points.
Also, I was trying to resist commenting on this because it just begs for a Neal comment that wouldn't relate to this topic, but for what it's worth, I wouldn't call Lucic's PP time "heavy" at all. He's on the second unit, and that second unit has been improved this year compared to pretty much every year I can remember (which isn't saying much). I agree with you that he was initially put there because they want to boost his stats and give him some confidence after the last couple of years, but in doing so they've actually found something that works, especially recently. The Flames' PP2 has kind of been an afterthought the last few years. They've consistently just thrown guys in there who they hope might find a bit of confidence if a bounce goes their way.
That's all you need to know about that player.
