The Path Less Travelled

Backlund is one of only two players playing for the Flames
that was drafted by the team.

By Guest Blogger Greger Buer

When you hit a fork in the road, you must choose a path. Left. Right. The Calgary Flames have been sitting at the crossroads for the past five seasons. At the end of each year, the Flames either came off a crippling first round defeat or missed the playoffs entirely. After each of these disappointments fans, media, and folks in the organizations themselves would try to explain what they thought the team needed to do to improve. Most of the time the problems these groups found were definitely viable, but the fundamental problem is this was a veteran team that gets older every year.

The Calgary Flames are so desperate for youth that everyone around them reacts in utter shock on those few occasions when a young player cracks the roster. Look at the hype when Mikael Backlund broke through, when T.J. Brodie had a solid training camp, or when youngster Roman Horak was named to the season opening squad. 

For most other teams an injection of youth is expected and at least one or two rookies make the jump each season. A quarter of the Nashville Predators seem to turn over each year, yet that team consistently makes the playoffs despite a payroll that is dwarfed by Calgary.

It’s redundant to beat on the “bad contract” drum as an excuse for the Flames, it is one reason this team can’t count itself among the NHL or the Western Conference’s elite, but there are many more. Calgary doesn’t have the top-end talent of a Vancouver or Chicago, Jay Bouwmeester isn’t the bona fide number one defenseman the Flames expected him to be when they paid him over six million dollars a year, and the club lacks the team speed that would allow them to regularly score on the rush or on the counter-attack.

There’s little doubt that an influx of number one or even top-five draft picks would make the Calgary Flames better, but this is true of any club. The answer doesn’t lie in scuttling the ship and pulling a “Pittsburgh/Chicago” (or an “Edmonton” if you drink the Kool-Aid from up North). 

The true method to build a team that can and will win consistently is to have a scouting department that can take the mid- to late-first round picks that good teams have and regularly turn them into NHLers. You also take advantage of the following rounds in the draft to fill your coffers with solid prospects that may eventually help your team.

The obvious and best example of a continuously impressive group of player prospectors is the Detroit Red Wings. The General Manager Ken Holland and his scouts and player personnel department have uncovered the late picks that are the envy of the rest of the league and a huge reason for that team’s consistent success – evident in the Red Wings’ 20 season playoff appearance streak.

The Detroit Red Wings roster features 13 – THIRTEEN! – players that were drafted by the club, of whom only two, defensemen Jakub Kindl and Nicklas Kronwall, were taken in the first round. The Calgary Flames have a grand total of two players on their squad that they drafted, forwards Mikael Backlund and David Moss. That’s a frightening discrepancy, especially considering that Detroit is a team that Calgary beat in the 2003-04 Stanley Cup run and fell to in six games in 2006-07. A few short years ago, the Flames counted themselves amongst Detroit’s peers and now it’s nearly parade-worthy when Calgary takes a regular season win over the Red Wings.

This divergence in paths demonstrates the crucial flaw in the Calgary Flames’ direction – or lack thereof. The utter failure of Calgary’s scouting and drafting is the most fundamental flaw in the NHL team’s hopes of future success. 

Instead of blaming the General Manager Darryl Sutter (who did make numerous crucial mistakes) or Jay Feaster and rather than pointing the finger at the era’s coaches, Darryl Sutter, Jim Playfair, Mike Keenan, or Brent Sutter – we should blame their inability to hire an effective head scout and the subordinates to help foster a strong youth and prospect pool. 

Rather or in addition to firing Darryl Sutter last December, the Flames should have taken money that they would otherwise blow on players (see: Matt Stajan, Niklas Hagman, Anton Babchuk, etc.) and instead try and woo someone from the Detroit Red Wings hockey operations to run their scouting and drafting, either: Assistant GM Jim Nill, Director of Amateur Scouting Joe McDonnell, or Director of European Scouting Hakan Andersson.

This may not be as exciting a plan as melting down a team and plummeting to last in the NHL for five years. Calgary bar owners might complain that they won’t have the opportunity to hold NHL Draft Lottery parties in April every season. Yet, the “secret” to continuous success does not – and has not been proven to – lie with bottoming out and absorbing three number one draft picks into your team. The ability to find talent throughout the draft and a system that encourages their development is crucial to success every year without requiring a repeat of the ‘Young Guns’ era.

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