FlamesNation mailbag: After the draft

If you had the Calgary Flames pegged as going into the draft, only using the five picks they had, and then leaving with some nice boys, congratulations on your insider scoop. For those of you with some questions lingering, we’re here for you.

That would be decidedly not fun. There aren’t many worse ways to start off Matthew Tkachuk’s new contract. Sam Bennett and Tkachuk clearly have some off-ice chemistry and it would be fun to see it develop into some on-ice productivity, but throwing an anchor on to their line when the Flames have better, cheaper options internally would raise some red flags. The Flames can’t offload James Neal, it’s not like they’re actively seeking more of the same, if not someone who has declined much more rapidly. Plus, we’d have to cheer for Corey Perry. It was difficult enough doing that when he was on Team Canada. No, thank you.

Hindsight always looks much better, but this question makes it sound like Micheal Ferland was traded so that James Neal could be brought on. This was not the case, and the only player we can really attribute leaving to Neal is Troy Brouwer, thanks to ownership okaying the buyout. There’s a chance that Neal could still rebound, and also he’s not the worst contract for the Flames right now. Also, if you don’t think some teams with bad ownership will absolutely spend close to as much on Ferland as the Flames did on Neal, you have a lot more faith in NHL general managers than they deserve. Ferland is very good and I personally miss him very much, but someone is going to overpay for him because that’s how free agency works.

Not particularly, especially if we think about the trade at the time. Sure, Elias Lindholm’s breakout season was amazing, but that was a gamble made by the Flames, and not a sure thing. It shouldn’t be factored into whether or not it was a good price at the time of the trade. Adam Fox had a lot more value at the time, and he could still blossom into a great pickup for the New York Rangers. Just because the Flames knew they couldn’t sign him doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have tried to milk some more value out of him. Think back to when Dion Phaneuf had to be traded from the Flames. Darryl Sutter took basically the first available package for him because he had to go, which was an irresponsible maneuver. Just because Phaneuf fell off a cliff and Matt Stajan ended up staying with either team the longest doesn’t mean that the trade was an absolutely awful one at the time. Just because trades work out differently years down the road doesn’t mean that prices become better or worse, they just become easier to swallow.

FlamesNation is decidedly Team Young and Fresh, not Team Follow Back.

I’m willing to bet money that there were several defenders that the Flames coveted from the draft, but there’s only so much you can do when you have draft picks in five of the seven rounds. Yes, the run of forwards that Brad Treliving and Co. drafted between Juuso Valimaki and Dustin Wolf was a rather long one, but that doesn’t mean that the Flames were exclusively scouting forwards during that time. They just drafted who they felt was the best pick at the time.

Everything is possible in this life.