WWYDW: Glencrossroads

Heading into this season, it seemed a forgone conclusion that Curtis Glencross would be sold off to the highest bidder at the trade deadline this season. I myself figured the Flames would be in full “everything on sale, including fixtures and furniture” mode by this point in the season. Well, at last check, he isn’t even on TSN’s big list of players rumoured-to-be-perhaps-will-be-traded.  

The Flames recent tentative return to relevance has completely changed the mindset of this franchise and the 2015 trade deadline but it at least seems as though the Flames won’t be diving head-first into the rental market either. However, the Flames do have one intriguing decision to make with one of their expiring contracts, Curtis Glencross.

Check out a myriad of questions and the oldest interview I could find with ol’ Scoreface after the jump!

The Flames are gearing up for the March 2 trade deadline and, as has been reported numerous times, the Flames GM has stated that he will be cautiously aggressive when appraising available players. What does this mean vis a vis the most valuable pending UFA in the Flames roster Curtis Glencross.   

There have really only been two trade deadlines where the Flames have been in a full-fledged rebuild, one in which they dealt the face of the franchise and one in which they dealt…Lee Stempniak and Reto Berra. So, there have been varying degrees of success come deadline day in years past. 

The Flames have been essentially unlucky with Mike Cammalleri being injured and ineffective leading up to last year’s trade deadline and as a result he had precious little value. While the merits of hanging on to Cammalleri (and eventually losing him to free-agency as was predicted post deadline) rather than taking whatever return was offered (a third-round pick was the rumoured offer) can be debated another time, we are here to discuss what should be done with Glencross this year. 

Brad Treliving has already stated that nothing that has happened this year has deterred him from enacting his long-term plan for this franchise but how far does this go? Does that include selling off an expiring contract like Glencross’? Is Glencross giving the Flames anything that would be missed if he was to be traded? Does he still chuckwagon race? So many questions this time of year.

I put some questions to you FN faithful and defer to your infinite wisdom:

Would you trade Glencross, no matter the return, because of the fact that the Flames are rebuilding and are trying to acquire as many future assets as possible? Do the Flames have internal options that can (or perhaps already are) producing at a rate comparable to Glencross?

Though Glencross’ offensive production has definitely waned this year, the Flames seem to be using him as a fairly effective checking forward and his possession numbers in that role have been decent. Is this a role that is worth re-signing Glencross for, even though he has publicly stated that he won’t accept a home-town discount with his next contract?

Earlier this afternoon, Thomas did a great job summarizing Glencross’ usefulness for the Flames moving forward and addressed many of the same questions we are discussing here. I suppose the real question is, what kind of return would you want back to make trading Glencross worth it?