Pacific division predictions

5.  Calgary Flames

And now we get to the subpar portion of the division. The Flames are running a bit dim these days. Firing Darryl Sutter was addition by subtraction, even if was overdue and on the heels of a player revolt. In his stead, they have promoted Ryan Huska from assistant coach to head coach. The jury is out on whether this will actually accomplish anything, though, or whether it’s merely putting lipstick on a pig as the Flames roster has a lot of dysfunction and holes in it.

Their goaltending is the poster child for the roster as a whole – Jakob Markstrom has been a massive failure as a signing and Dan Vladar has also been a failure, just at a lower cap hit.

Tyler Toffoli already said he won’t sign an extension to play in Calgary and has since been traded to New Jersey. Andrew Mangiapane, Elias Lindholm, and Noah Hanifin have all followed Toffoli and said they won’t sign extensions in Calgary. That’s about half their core players who want out of Calgary – and really who can blame them? The Flames are a complete and total joke. They had a great opportunity with the Matthew Tkachuk trade to get a huge amount of futures and start a rebuild, and instead chose to trade for two warm bodies that frankly at this point I would expect will want out in trade as well – and they just got there last season.

This is a franchise that throughout its entire existence save for the 80s and 2004 has basically been crying out for a rebuild as there is no plan for a vision for this team or a plan on how to get out of the current funk they’re in. They never have any consistent success, always making the playoffs and then not, then making the playoffs again and then not. They’ve never embarked on a full rebuild in the team’s history as the owners remind me very much of Harold Ballard and Rocky Wirtz – who cares how the team is doing on the ice as long as they’re generating $$ for us?

New GM Craig Conroy has his work cut out for him, but the biggest red flag is he’s also a favourite pick of ownership, which means he’s a company man who probably won’t risk rocking the boat and asking for the green light to do what needs to be a done – a complete and total rebuild of the team. Probably building the scouting department from scratch is a good idea too as the Flames have had a rather spotty drafting record for years – shown by the fact that all of their division rivals that are superior to them have more homegrown draft picks on their roster than the Flames do.

How long is it going to be before Huberdeau and Weegar go out? Probably not long, at this rate. Nazem Kadri won’t be far behind them, count on it.

Heck, the Flames only have eight draft picks on their roster – the Oilers have 10. 11 if Raphael Lavoie makes the roster as expected at training camp.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the Flames will never have any success until they blow up their scouting department and remake it with competent scouts as well as rebuild the roster, painful as that may be in the short term.

After all, you have no more Matthew Tkachuks to trade to Florida anymore.