FlamesNation Mailbag: The trade deadline extravaganza

The big day is finally here! We spend our time answering mostly non-trade deadline questions. Funny how that works.

No, I wouldn’t worry about it. Specific to this Stockton team, it’s quite clear that the issue is goaltending. With league average goaltending, they would likely be in the mix. They don’t have it, so they aren’t going to the playoffs. It doesn’t undermine the strong performances by Flames prospects.

The main goal of the AHL is to develop players who are not ready for the NHL. Anything else is just gravy. I don’t think Dillon Dube, tied for second in U21 point-per-game scoring, is going to be worse off because he didn’t play anywhere from four-to-20 more games in the AHL.

The AHL playoffs’ impact on development is almost certainly overhyped. If we look at Flames AHL grads in recent years – David Rittich, Mark Jankowski, Rasmus Andersson, Oliver Kylington, Garnet Hathaway, Andrew Mangiapane – they have played just one AHL postseason series in their life, and they were out in five games. It didn’t change their NHL trajectories for better or worse. If they didn’t get those five games, they would’ve still probably proceeded to the NHL. If you are worried about the “winning culture” or whatever,  you can look at current Heat players Andrew Nielsen and Kerby Rychel who have won Calder Cups. They are probably not going to have regular NHL jobs despite the hardware.

AHL playoff success and NHL success aren’t connected. One is a team metric and the other an individual metric. The 2000-01 Saint John Flames won the Calder Cup. The Flames didn’t see much in the way of payoffs, outside of depth players Chris Clark and Steve Montador. Their first rounders from the previous years, Rico Fata and Daniel Tkaczuk, didn’t become better NHLers because of it.

No, playoff performers are generally who you expect them to be. Here’s the list of top playoff performers since 2000 by season. There are a few surprising names (emphasis on the few) but most of them are guys like Ville Leino or Fernando Pisani: anonymous players who rose to the occasion and then flamed out shortly after.

I think the hype behind Neal becoming a postseason success is a combination of him being there multiple times in the past and the general feeling that he has to be better than what he’s been so far. I don’t think he has a special “playoff performer” gene that kicks in, as his playoff performances are generally similar to his regular season appearances (0.67 ppg in the regular season versus 0.55 in the post). If that holds true, then perhaps the playoffs will be a continuation of his disappointing season.

If Neal gets his act together in the playoffs, it’s all welcome news, but I have serious doubts that he does.

I would have to say Minnesota. They can’t score, have average goaltending, and are in the process of selling off their team. If they make the playoffs, it’s likely on accident because the rest of the wild card teams couldn’t get it all together. Bruce Boudreau has a knack for early playoff exits too, so they seem like an easy team to steamroll.

The least ideal teams would likely be one of Colorado or Dallas. They’re both weird teams in that they’re extremely difficult on just one side of the ice. Colorado has one of the best lines in hockey and can really score, but are leaky defensively. Dallas simply can’t score, but has two goalies with 0.920 SV%. I don’t think that either of these teams could beat the Flames in the playoffs, but they’re likely going to be very frustrating teams to play against. Dallas is going to stay back in their own end for the entire series while Colorado just might keep scoring to keep things closer than they should be.

Pure rental. It’s been detailed on every other mailbag, but the Flames have cap issues next season and they’re going to be very hard to solve unless they manage to move big money out (unlikely). If they have to make a trade, pure rental seems the best option going forward.

I don’t think Treliving’s mindset is so rigidly locked in that he has to re-sign whoever he trades for, but in the case of Mark Stone or any of the other elite forwards, I think he wants to keep them around. Why pay a major price which includes players who could contribute now for someone who might only stick around for 20 games? Treliving doesn’t pay big for short-term gain. If he could re-sign Stone, he would likely have already pulled the trigger on the trade.

It isn’t unprecedented for a 35+ defenceman to go on a tear like Giordano’s having, but it is reserved for only the greats of the game.

There are only 17 individual seasons where a defencemen has scored 0.75 points per game after the age of 35. Seventeen is a bit deceptive, because only nine defencemen have actually done that. Nik Lidstrom accounts for five of those 17 seasons, and Al MacInnis has accounted for three of them. With names like Ray Bourque, Sergei Zubov, and Sergei Gonchar joining them, it’s clearly the mark of a stellar defenceman.

Even rarer is the 35+ defenceman who has averaged a point-per-game over at least 80 games, as only Lindstrom and Bourque have ever done it. Giordano is currently sitting at a 0.97 ppg mark. He’s playing HHOF hockey this season.

No, they’re just struggling. Thanks to Natural Stat Trick’s game-by-game line tracking data, we can see that the first line, relative to the entire team, has had their heads kicked in possession-wise (CF rel%) in every game but four (vs NYI, Vancouver, Washington, and Ottawa) since the all-star break. There’s something wrong here.

Maybe they’re getting a bit unlucky. Even in their struggles, you figure they might just get a greasy goal once or twice, and then maybe snap out of it next game. No such luck. I think it was easy to foresee that the first line would slow down eventually like they have in seasons past – it’s ridiculous to expect one line to carry the team for all 82 games – but they look completely out of sync right now and it’s having an impact on the team.

Thankfully, the, uh, fourth line has filled in for the time being but that is also going to be temporary. With the Flames unlikely to add a first line winger before the deadline, it’s something they’ll have to figure out before the playoffs get underway.