I know part of your argument is the Flames are under performing, but the results when you actually look at it are terrible. Yes Huberdeau and Kadri are having good years, Coronato as a rookie being .5ppg is nice, but Coleman is our 4th highest scoring forward at 32 points. 4 players with more than 30 points (granted Zary probably would be if healthy). Nearly every team you list beats that.
A healthy Kraken team is deeper than us, with just as many players under performing as you think the Flames are.
Hawks is actually fairly comparable in my eyes. Arguably better results this year.
Prior to the selling off some players, Sharks were both deeper offensively and arguably better top end as well. This absolutely leads to Lunatik's point though that their defense is suspect because of it and therefore they are losing games.
Islanders. Man, that's a tire fire and they STILL have better results than us. Especially with Barzal out. 7 forwards over 30 points to our 4.
Flyers Konecny would be leading our team by 15 points. FIFTEEN. Mitchkov is a more lethal weapon than any player on our roster despite it being his rookie season and playing for Torts most of the year. The Corpse of Couturier literally has more points than any forward on our team not named Kadri or Huberdeau.
Ducks I ain't even gonna argue, but sadly they aren't THAT far off of us either.
Pens have a better top six imo, but the third line has been bad enough to call the top nine into question. Nucks still have/had better top nine depth easily. Bruins in my opinion are in a far worse situation than a lot of the teams you said were easily worse than us, but Pasta is Pasta.
Even if the Flames were magically 10-15 goals better as a team, we'd still be fairly close to most of the teams you listed as definitively better as (assuming 3 points for each goal).
Flames have under performed in some ways sure. I'm not sure I agree with each player being 10 points back of their norm, but let's look at it.
I think Kuzmenko was a huge disappointment. I don't know if I blame Huska on that or not to be honest. Backlund.... age, injury or coaching? Hard to say. Sharkie? Injury, coaching, coming back to earth from last year, hard to say too when he's literally yoyo'ed his entire career. Coleman being closer to his career norms makes sense to me. He's usually a 30-40 point guy, last year not withstanding. Frost I'd like more from, Farabee too, but those weren't just Flames issues either.
I think the only players that could/should have 10 more points would probably be Sharangovich and Backlund. Both have had injuries. The two former flyers/Kuzmenko too perhaps.
of course if you compare stats to what they did this year we are same or worse, we are the most underperforming team offensively along with the preds and maybe boston.
kraken: highly disagree they have deeper, our top 9 is better than their on paper, who on their team is actually underperforming relative to expectation? quick glance has pretty much every guy performing similar to previous year.
hawks: comparable? who would you rather have for this yr only, bedard+teuvo or kadri+hubderdeau? the flames duo is definitely better, the rest of players dont compare to calgarys either (dont say donato, guys previous career high is 30pts).
sharks: they have 5 fwds total (6 with granlund) worthy of being an nhl top 9, celebrini is a best of either team, but theres no argument for the rest being better for calgary.
flyers: again, konecny is best no doubt, is michkov better than kadri and huberdeau right now? debatable. compare the rest of the team not stats because our stats suck, are you saying you would rather have their 2-9 than ours? not to mention we have a weegar and andersson to help out too with the numbers. frost was .5 ppg on that team with torts, and was apparently whipped around all the time, hes 0.33 here in calgary, farabee went from .38 to .22
Isle: top end talent is similar. they have better result just speaks to how crap our results have been. holmstrom pageau tsyplakov should not be outscoring coleman backs sharangovich etc rn
Pens, crosby carries whatever lines hes on, they have no bottom 6 whatsoever and malkins old. if you want to say pens better because of crosby, i can live with it, but to me they are the same tier.
Nucks, hughes carries. depending on what you think of pettersson and if he can bounce back. but I am not sold on a team with pius suter and kiefer sherwood in their top 6.
Boston: idk whats up with linholm, hes underperformance blew up that team.
the 10 pts back is definitely an exaggeration, the only players performing 10 or more pts below expectation are andersson and sharangovich (i really love the guy but something is clearly not right here, hes not shooting at all). but we have so many guys scoring 5ish pts less than we expect and it adds up. if we score 10-15 more goals then im pretty sure we would be close or in a playoff spot right now considering how close most of our games are.
I simply question huska ability to coach the offensive end of hockey, he can do the D end no doubt and focuses on it at the expense offense, thats fine too because you do what you have to do to win. its situations when they are down in the 3rd and needs to press for a goal that exposes hes inability to coach the other end at all. if they play like they did against dallas in the 3rd, press and lose, i can live with it. but they normally look like the utah game, the avs game (eventhough they scored 2), where they generate jack all all period when they should be pressing.
