Speculation: Armchair GM 2024-25 Season, Craig Conroy's Can Do Calgary Flames

[crackdown44]

Yeah I mean last year we drafted 9th even though we had Lindholm, Hanifin and Tanev for over half the year. We dealt Markstrom in the summer too

Wouldn’t have been unrealistic to think this team might finish bottom 5, or at the very least bottom 10

 

[Mobiandi]

If Kadri carries positive value, we'd be foolish not to trade him in the summer. We can look at overpaying Tavares as a stopgap or even Matt Duchene (don’t like him but not the worst option).

 

[Zirakzigil]

The Flames drafted 9th last year after collapsing after the trade deadline. Leading up to Hanifin/Lindholm/Tanev trades they were fighting for a playoff spot. The expectation this year was poor goaltending and no depth on defense. Neither of which happened. Again, to bottom out you would have to gut the defense and offense. Which would most likely ruin Wolf and Co for the chance of maybe drafting a player that might turn into a star.

 

[Some Other Flame]

Once again, the Flames literally finished 26th in 2015-2016 all of one year after that 2014-2015 cinderella season. And that was despite Gaudreau putting up a point per game and Giordano being a real number one defenceman getting norris consideration.

You don't have to be the worst of the worst to finish in the bottom 10, just a little below .500.

 

[Volica]

Yeah I mean last year we drafted 9th even though we had Lindholm, Hanifin and Tanev for over half the year. We dealt Markstrom in the summer too

Wouldn’t have been unrealistic to think this team might finish bottom 5, or at the very least bottom 10

If Vladar played every game this season we'd probably be a bottom 5-6 team.
Problem is that Wolf is getting the lion's share now and that dude is legit one of the best goalies on the planet as a rookie netminder.

Like if hockey had an accurate WAR statistic, Wolf would probably be leading the league in that metric

We need elite talent, there's no question. This team doesn't score enough and doesn't create enough chances. There's a major lack of creativity. It's a team of essentially middle 6 players and one of the worst defensive groups in the NHL.

 

[Sparky93]

Not really sure why people are upset. This is probably the best possible outcome, to end that rancid Monhan trade. Players will age and contracts will expire. Wolf looks amazing but we've all seen young goalies walk in and look almost unbeatable before. Teams study up in the offseason and the following year they look pretty mortal. Not saying that it will happen, just saying that it wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Figgy44]

If Vladar played every game this season we'd probably be a bottom 5-6 team.
Problem is that Wolf is getting the lion's share now and that dude is legit one of the best goalies on the planet as a rookie netminder.

Like if hockey had an accurate WAR statistic, Wolf would probably be leading the league in that metric

We need elite talent, there's no question. This team doesn't score enough and doesn't create enough chances. There's a major lack of creativity. It's a team of essentially middle 6 players and one of the worst defensive groups in the NHL.

Yeah, but imagine this is the end result after our team was hollowed out over the last 24 months. People wouldn't make an educated bet that we might squeak into playoffs at the start of the season.

We literally lost two roster guys for basically nothing because of legal issues (I don't care if we call them bottom 6, it's still a loss of talent with no replacement).

We literally got rid of a passable top 3/4 for many teams and asked the remaining players to step up (say what you want about Z, but some teams easily have him as second pairing).

We moved a piece in our top 6 in a key position that we still haven't had a chance to replace (regardless of your opinions on Lindholm, we are currently downgraded and Frost isn't a replacement for Lindy).

We moved our starting goaltender this off season.

This season, we are relying a ton on rookies and sophomores. We are relying heavily on players brand new to the team/ Huska's system.

Playoffs? We talking playoffs? An educated bet was lottery pick.

It's almost strange looking at teams that tanked for elite talent, only to languish for many years with worse than what we have now.

Oilers running this on their back end and they're contending:

Ekholm - Bouchard
Nurse - Kulak/Emberson?

Skinner/Pickard

Flames retoobling or something after sending out a ton of talent on the back end and currently running this for a rebuild/retool:

Weegar - Pachal/Miromanov
Bahl/Hanley - Andersson

Wolf/Vladar

We're 9 points behind Edmonton with same GP. We're 2 points ahead of Vancouver with same GP. We want to add elite talent to this core, no doubt, but something is hilariously wrong that we're within striking distance of those teams with 30 games to go.

Ignoring tie breakers, 10 less points and we tie 4th worst teams in the West, 16 less points to tie 3rd worst, 22 less points to tie 2nd worst, 23 to tie worst in West and most of those guys have elite talent or multiple talents considered elite.

I'm enjoying our ride right now, but I'm also wondering if Conroy is right that we'd have a hell of a time successfully bombing bad enough to get into the top echelon of the draft for elite talent. Again, playoffs? We talking playoffs? An educated bet was lottery pick... and yet with hindsight I don't know how educated that lottery pick bet is anymore.

 

[Yepthatsme]

Cop out answer? This teams highest scorer is 32nd of 32 in terms of highest scorers on their team.

Yes they have some solid young players in Zary, Coronato, Frost. But I think you’re kidding yourself if you think they have a single elite player outside of Wolf. Maybe Parekh can become that.

Our top scorer has 3 secondary assists on the season and zero at 5v5. As a natural playmaker. Our leading scorer from last year has the 14th worst 5v5 on ice shooting percentage league wide for forwards. Lomberg’s linemates finish at a 20% higher rate than Kadri’s have this season, I would love to hear why that’s because Kadri just isn’t good. Our 2 leading goal scorers from last year are 23rd and 55th outof 380 on that same list.

For the same reason Protas, Dubois, Marchenko, Monahan, and Rossi are nowhere near as good as their numbers say they are, our offense isn’t nearly as bad as it has been. It could change tomorrow, or it could change next season, but it’s due for regression.

 

[crackdown44]

Our top scorer has 3 secondary assists on the season and zero at 5v5. As a natural playmaker. Our leading scorer from last year has the 14th worst 5v5 on ice shooting percentage league wide for forwards. Lomberg’s linemates finish at a 20% higher rate than Kadri’s have this season, I would love to hear why that’s because Kadri just isn’t good. Our 2 leading goal scorers from last year are 23rd and 55th outof 380 on that same list.

For the same reason Protas, Dubois, Marchenko, Monahan, and Rossi are nowhere near as good as their numbers say they are, our offense isn’t nearly as bad as it has been. It could change tomorrow, or it could change next season, but it’s due for regression.

Yeah but so is our goaltending

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

Our top scorer has 3 secondary assists on the season and zero at 5v5. As a natural playmaker. Our leading scorer from last year has the 14th worst 5v5 on ice shooting percentage league wide for forwards. Lomberg’s linemates finish at a 20% higher rate than Kadri’s have this season, I would love to hear why that’s because Kadri just isn’t good. Our 2 leading goal scorers from last year are 23rd and 55th outof 380 on that same list.

For the same reason Protas, Dubois, Marchenko, Monahan, and Rossi are nowhere near as good as their numbers say they are, our offense isn’t nearly as bad as it has been. It could change tomorrow, or it could change next season, but it’s due for regression.

I like Kadri. But he’s a 2C in this league, especially on a contender. He has a low shooting percentage because he almost never makes a pass to a higher danger player. He is probably the most selfish player in the league in this regard. He’s effective but I don’t expect him to start lighting it up any time soon.

The Flames lack elite forwards, Huberdeau is the closest thing they have and he’s more a low end first liner at this point. Zary and Coronato look well on their way to being legit top 6 guys. There is no statistic you can point to that is going to convince me that this team is all of a sudden going to be anything more than a bottom 1/3 offensive team. They just don’t have the pieces.

 

[Yepthatsme]

I like Kadri. But he’s a 2C in this league, especially on a contender. He has a low shooting percentage because he almost never makes a pass to a higher danger player. He is probably the most selfish player in the league in this regard. He’s effective but I don’t expect him to start lighting it up any time soon.

The Flames lack elite forwards, Huberdeau is the closest thing they have and he’s more a low end first liner at this point. Zary and Coronato look well on their way to being legit top 6 guys. There is no statistic you can point to that is going to convince me that this team is all of a sudden going to be anything more than a bottom 1/3 offensive team. They just don’t have the pieces.

That’s a cool theory, but it’s just extremely easy to prove wrong. Here’s what his on ice shooting percentage usually looks like:
2024-25: 5.1%
2023-24: 9.8%
2022-23: 8.39%
2021-22: 9.87%
2020-21: 7.49%
2019-20: 11.56%

So in his worst year in the previous 5, his teammates finish their chances 50% more often, in his luckiest year it’s 120% more.

Unironically saying “I don’t care about what the facts say, I’ve made up my mind” is a funny stance to make. We are in every way one of the most snake bit teams in the league, who in the past 2 months actually haven’t been bottom 10 (11th, so by a technicality), and just improved our forward group.

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

That’s a cool theory, but it’s just extremely easy to prove wrong. Here’s what his on ice shooting percentage usually looks like:
2024-25: 5.1%
2023-24: 9.8%
2022-23: 8.39%
2021-22: 9.87%
2020-21: 7.49%
2019-20: 11.56%

So in his worst year in the previous 5, his teammates finish their chances 50% more often, in his luckiest year it’s 120% more.

Unironically saying “I don’t care about what the facts say, I’ve made up my mind” is a funny stance to make. We are in every way one of the most snake bit teams in the league, who in the past 2 months actually haven’t been bottom 10 (11th, so by a technicality), and just improved our forward group.

There is room for improvement. He’s a solid player, I’ve never said otherwise. But he’s not a truly elite player which you seem to be suggesting he is. He’s a solid #2C.
He’s on pace for 57 points. Even if you assume he should get ten more, because of luck, which granted can be a factor, he’s not really pacing at anything that resembles a truly elite player. Which has been my argument the whole time. You can throw 87 more statistics at me but it isn’t going to change my mind that the Flames lack elite forwards and are a bottom 1/3 offensive team.

Here’s a stat(or a fact as you like to say), they are 5th last in goals per game. Yes there is likely some regression (in a good way), but they just aren’t elite and haven’t shown that.

Edit: this team is trending toward being the Lundqvist/Shesterkin Rangers, Price Habs, Saros/Rinne Predators. Solid teams with great goaltending. Teams that are consistently solid, but lacking the truly elite talent to beat the best teams to win a cup.

 

[Yepthatsme]

There is room for improvement. He’s a solid player, I’ve never said otherwise. But he’s not a truly elite player which you seem to be suggesting he is. He’s a solid #2C.
He’s on pace for 57 points. Even if you assume he should get ten more, because of luck, which granted can be a factor, he’s not really pacing at anything that resembles a truly elite player. Which has been my argument the whole time. You can throw 87 more statistics at me but it isn’t going to change my mind that the Flames lack elite forwards and are a bottom 1/3 offensive team.

Here’s a stat(or a fact as you like to say), they are 5th last in goals per game. Yes there is likely some regression (in a good way), but they just aren’t elite and haven’t shown that.

Edit: this team is trending toward being the Lundqvist/Shesterkin Rangers, Price Habs, Saros/Rinne Predators. Solid teams with great goaltending. Teams that are consistently solid, but lacking the truly elite talent to beat the best teams to win a cup.

A 50% increase just back up to his worst rate the previous 5 years brings him up to 48 points in 52 games. His previous 5 year average bring in up to 56 points in 52 games. People struggle to comprehend percentages and rates so I don’t blame you, but that’s the severity these percentages play through “bad luck”. Now apply the same to Coleman, the same to Sharangovich, Huberdeau’s hilariously small secondary assists, and you start to get the picture.

You can stick your head in the sand all you’d like, but outliers don’t remain outliers for long periods of time. Ironically, I bet you’d agree with the same idea applied in the reverse. Would you rather bet Huberdeau is now a year over year 30 goal guy, or would you hazard to bet he won’t continue shooting 22% the rest of his career? You don’t have to answer, just know the hypocrisy in believing in one and not the other.

 

[Ledge And Dairy]

No they wouldnt be. You are underrating how horrendously bad teams like the Sharks and Hawks are this year.

That's 2 teams, not 5

 

[Ledge And Dairy]

“Easily bottom 5”

Points percentage: 15th
Corsi: 10th
Fenwick: 11th
Shots for: 12th
Shots against: 20th
Goals for: 28th
Goals against: 15th
xGF: 18th
xGA: 19th
Scoring chances: 14th
Scoring chance against: 24th
High danger chances: 19th
High danger chances against: 21st

I could go for years. Only bottom 5 stats we have are goals for which since December 1st is 22nd, and PK which is also 22nd over that time frame. Your claim is systematically, categorically, and demonstrably false, and just rooted in a lot of strong opinions people had this offseason that were proven very wrong. Wolf makes us a lot better, but not that much better.

You can argue chances for all you want but that's not results. The results show that this team has struggled to score more than 3 goals a game all season, if you substitute Wolf out for Vladar in even half of his games we quite likely lose all of them.

 

[Yepthatsme]

You can argue chances for all you want but that's not results. The results show that this team has struggled to score more than 3 goals a game all season, if you substitute Wolf out for Vladar in even half of his games we quite likely lose all of them.

Those “results” also say Columbus and Washington are two of the best offensive teams in the league, I’ll match whatever bet you make that Washington isn’t going to be the 3rd best offense next season and Columbus won’t be the 8th. It takes zero effort to look passed “results” to see what’s unsustainable, and Calgary’s offensive numbers are firmly in that group with Washington, Columbus, and Montreal’s offense not being sustainable, and Nashville, us, NYR, and Pittsburgh being massively due for positive regression.

Every year players and teams make fans have terrible takes based on massive outliers in these “results”, it’s why everyone who hopped on making fun of Edmonton to start this season is looking terrible currently unfortunately.

Plus it takes anyone a half second to see the quality of competition, percent of home games, and team rest Wolf gets instead of Vladar. Wild is obviously the better goalie, but it’s foolish to say we lose all of Wolf’s games if Vladar starts when he finally gets easier completion. Just like it was plain terrible to say we are obviously a bottom 5 team without Wolf.

 

[Some Other Flame]

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

A 50% increase just back up to his worst rate the previous 5 years brings him up to 48 points in 52 games. His previous 5 year average bring in up to 56 points in 52 games. People struggle to comprehend percentages and rates so I don’t blame you, but that’s the severity these percentages play through “bad luck”. Now apply the same to Coleman, the same to Sharangovich, Huberdeau’s hilariously small secondary assists, and you start to get the picture.

You can stick your head in the sand all you’d like, but outliers don’t remain outliers for long periods of time. Ironically, I bet you’d agree with the same idea applied in the reverse. Would you rather bet Huberdeau is now a year over year 30 goal guy, or would you hazard to bet he won’t continue shooting 22% the rest of his career? You don’t have to answer, just know the hypocrisy in believing in one and not the other.

Actually, you need to check your math. I’ve never been a huge stats person for most things in life, especially sports, I think anecdotal evidence is far more meaningful.
However, you’re making a shit ton of assumptions math lord..
A) assuming that Nazem will continue to collect the same proportion of points of the goals while he’s on the ice, if his on ice shooting percentage increases dramatically.
B) assuming that he has the talent he has in past years surrounding him.

You always do this. You find obscure stats that confirm your bias. Last you were going off about how Vladar was way better than Wolf. That comparing Wolf to Markstrom was an absolute joke.

You add red herrings in the form of stats, instead of actually addressing the crux of my argument which is that the Flames lack elite offensive talent.

But if you really want to go and convince yourself Nazem Kadri is Nate MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, Nikita Kucherov, or Connor McDavid. Go ahead. But it makes you look like a jackass.

The Flames don’t have elite talent. That’s why they struggle to score. They play a low risk dump and chase style. They don’t hold onto pucks at the blue line and try to make fancy plays. They try to make high percentage plays, get goals on screens and deflections. And they try to play mistake free hockey. And they are doing a good job at it. Because they simply don’t have the talent to convert on as high a percentage of chances as other teams.

 

[Sparky93]

Anyone else curious how Huberdeau-Frost would look?

 

[Volica]

Anyone else curious how Huberdeau-Frost would look?

I've been very curious personally.
Frost is just super confident carrying the puck.

 

[Mobiandi]

Advanced team stats in the NHL are so misleading.

When you get into the mix of the 20ish teams that are in the middle of the pack, all you hear is that “normalization” is coming. Shooting percentages will either reduce or increase towards some theoretical mean. Teams in 13th should actually be in 20th and teams in 17th are playing like the 12th best team in the league.

We’re almost 55 games into the season and although there can be some wild trends in 5 game swings, what you see is usually what you get by this point. The biggest factor that sets in around now is fatigue and injuries. We’d seen a few years in the Gaudreau era where the wheels would fall off after the ASB. It’s not PDO or xG or whatever. It’s just tiredness and games adding up.

This is a bad offensive team with a highly suspect defensive group led by Dustin Wolf. After this trade, we have a better forward group. Let’s see what happens now as the new guys build chemistry

 

[DomBarr]

Those “results” also say Columbus and Washington are two of the best offensive teams in the league, I’ll match whatever bet you make that Washington isn’t going to be the 3rd best offense next season and Columbus won’t be the 8th. It takes zero effort to look passed “results” to see what’s unsustainable, and Calgary’s offensive numbers are firmly in that group with Washington, Columbus, and Montreal’s offense not being sustainable, and Nashville, us, NYR, and Pittsburgh being massively due for positive regression.

Every year players and teams make fans have terrible takes based on massive outliers in these “results”, it’s why everyone who hopped on making fun of Edmonton to start this season is looking terrible currently unfortunately.

Plus it takes anyone a half second to see the quality of competition, percent of home games, and team rest Wolf gets instead of Vladar. Wild is obviously the better goalie, but it’s foolish to say we lose all of Wolf’s games if Vladar starts when he finally gets easier completion. Just like it was plain terrible to say we are obviously a bottom 5 team without Wolf.

This team is riding goaltending (primarily Wolf) to compete for the 2nd wildcard spot and if he had a 14-14-2 record (so lost 5 games that he won) this team would be tied for bottom 5 so it is kind of obvious.

You already played the the Flames are due for a positive improvement in offence during the offseason using the same stats and yet the Flames' offence is in the bottom 1/2 of the league for the 3rd season and its getting worse each year, there is NO positive improvement coming, as the younger players coming in are not driving net new offence. This trend is not going to change as long as Calgary looks at Kadri, Huberdeau, Backlund, Coleman, Andersson and Weegar as CORE pieces that they will not trade.

 

[crackdown44]

You can’t really make the argument that our on ice shooting percentage is going to come back to the norm without also acknowledging that our goaltending should do the same tbh

I’d agree that we’re probably a little bit snake bit up front but we don’t have elite scorers so it’s pretty normal that our goals for are below expected. We do have elite goaltending so it’s also normal that our goals against are below expected tbh

 

[Volica]

You can’t really make the argument that our on ice shooting percentage is going to come back to the norm without also acknowledging that our goaltending should do the same tbh

I’d agree that we’re probably a little bit snake bit up front but we don’t have elite scorers so it’s pretty normal that our goals for are below expected. We do have elite goaltending so it’s also normal that our goals against are below expected tbh

Both should normalize somewhat, right?
We have the 2nd best SV% 5v5 in the NHL.
We have the 3rd lowest SH% 5v5 in the NHL.
Our PDO is right in the middle of the league.

Telling us that a move to the mean would pretty much have us in the same result.

It's actually really funny, that this team when sorting for SH% is surrounded by teams that get caved in mostly 5v5. We are a flat out 50% club.

I agree with @Tkachuk Norris though. This team needs probably 2 or 3 elite pieces still. They got the goalie box checked. They might have a defender box checked with the young man in the OHL. Up front they need to add some big pieces here, and it's going to be interesting how they do it.

 

[Flames Fanatic]

You can’t really make the argument that our on ice shooting percentage is going to come back to the norm without also acknowledging that our goaltending should do the same tbh

I’d agree that we’re probably a little bit snake bit up front but we don’t have elite scorers so it’s pretty normal that our goals for are below expected. We do have elite goaltending so it’s also normal that our goals against are below expected tbh

Agreed to an extent. I think truly elite goalies in the NHL will always get you average at worst, top ten being the minimum norm. But with every passing year, the number of goalies that can consistently do that drops.