A GM’s Carol: The Ghost Of Draft Schmaft
12 years ago
Jay Feaster, after a long night, had woken up to head to the bathroom to deposit the remnants of the liter of cola he’d had just before bed. Suddenly, his room started to fill with fog and a sense of lost opportunity washed over him.
"Darrrrryl…."
"My name is Jay."
"Oh yeah, Jaaayyyyy, I’m the Ghost of Draft Schmaft"
"What do you want with me?"
"I’m going to show you the damage that Calgary’s terrible drafting has caused."
With that the thickening fog dissipated and Feaster and the ghostly spectre have moved to a chilling scene.
There wasn’t enough room to put Chris Chucko here
"What is this place?"
"This is the graveyard of players drafted by your Calgary Flames. This is but a small sample of the first round failures that your franchise have selected."
"Well, at least we didn’t trade two first rounders for Phil Kessel!" *Chuckles to himself*
"No, you guys traded one first rounder for noted superstar Olli Jokinen and then moved your 2009 first rounder Tim Erixon for magic beans."
"Well, that was the last guy. He’s the one that dug this hole."
"And it is a massive hole. The organization’s prospect pool has been ranked 27th in the NHL by Puck Prospectus and 30th by Hockey’s Future."
"Hmmm, that doesn’t sound good."
"No kidding, under weaknesses they put ‘lack of talent’. I think that’s a bad sign."
"This is the team that drafted Al MacInnis, Gary Roberts, Paul Ranheim, Brett Hull, Gary Suter, Joe Nieuwendyk and Theoren Fleury! We must have picked up some good players since then."
"Sure you did. Look at this list of your draft picks. The Flames have drafted a lof of NHLers like Chuck Kobasew, Jarrett Stoll, and Kurtis Foster."
"I don’t recognize those guys as Flames…"
"That’s because they all made their names elsewhere. Although, I have to admit, those prospect rankings were a little unfair. They said that the Flames don’t have any defencemen coming up through the system but that’s not true. You guys drafted a couple of players that will staples on Hockey Night in Canada for the next decade."
"Oh fuck you old man!"
"Maybe you’d prefer a picture of Doug Gilmour?"
"That’s it, I am out of here."
"You’ll go when I’m good and ready to let you go and not a second sooner. Before I leave I want you to go through this spectacular NHL draft database in which all of the Flames’ mediocrity over the past 17 years is laid bare. You can see how during Darryl Sutter’s tenure the Flames drafted 47 players and have the fewest NHL points per drafted player. Flames fans will be able to work their way through it to see for themselves just how poorly their team has scouted, drafted, and developed their players."
"Please, stop it…" *weeps*
With tears streaming down his face at the horrors the three ghosts had shown him he looked around and the fog had dissipated. He was no longer in the graveyard of awful drafts past but was back in his room in a cement building in Calgary. Feaster raced to his window.
"YOU THERE! WHAT DAY IS IT?"
"Why, it’s September 9th."
"So there’s still hope…"
And with that Jay Feaster sat down to plot his team’s future and plant the seeds of its resurrection.
What would YOU do to help arrest Calgary’s decline?
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