The Calgary Flames continue to surprise many, but they should be cautious with their roster and stand pat
Sportsnet: Jason Bukala on what the Calgary Flames should be looking to do leading up to the March 7th NHL trade deadline.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Matt Marchese: “Calgary is in such an interesting position because they’ve gotten to this point, they’re here where nobody thought they would be. Even probably internally, they would tell you that, ‘yeah, we were thinking we could be here,’ but they may not believe that.
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But they’re in a position where they can say, ‘okay, we can add something.’ Maybe it’s more, you know, we’ll pay a price for a longer-term piece that fits our plan. If that’s even, you know, accessible to us. Or do they just stand pat? Or do they trade guys away because they know this is not the peak here? This is just the beginning of us building some momentum towards where we’re going to go. (Jason Bukala), you can start.
Bukala: “Stand pat. Absolutely stand pat, and here’s my reason. It’s really attractive when you look at what they’ve got going on. (A) they’re in a playoff mix here, you know, and they could push for a playoff spot. I hope they do, because it’s a good story.
They got over $18 million in cap space. Their draft capital is flush. They got prospects on the horizon. They have all that. What they also have going for them right now, is they’re building up scar tissue with some youngsters with some good veteran leadership to deliver when the games get harder going forward. Okay, so they’re learning now, and they’re going to learn more as you keep going forward.
So for me, when you’re punching above, you’re playing weight like that. If they add a guy, let’s just say they go and add it, even a top-six guy, or a top-three defenseman, whatever the case may be. I’m not going to sit here and, everybody says it just get in and you never know what can happen. I get it. But are they coming out of the West to be a standing Cup champion? I would say that that’s very, very unlikely. They’re not actually.
So I would stay the course. And you know, the opposite to what’s going on in Vancouver. They’re building something in Calgary. They got that culture. Watch them play. They play like, they’re not out of it. When they’re out of a game, they’re not out of a game.
Like night, they got badly outshot. Badly out played for half the game Buffalo Sabers. Dustin Wolf’s been all world. He’s proving that. Prove it every step of the way. He’s been all world. They they get a muffin off (Nazem) Kadri. You know (Jonathan) Huberdeau scores a shorty. He takes, absorbs contact in the offensive zone to dish to Kadri for that muffin goal. But it’s 2-2 all of a sudden, now they’re back in it. And of course, the rest is history.
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If you, when you’re a younger group, half of them are still younger and if you got a guy sitting across the room been blocking shots with his face for the last six weeks, and you, you swoop in a guy thinking that it’s going to make us better, us better, that’s delicate. Because that guy goes 12 minutes to seven minutes, and this other guy might not be carrying the same sort of enthusiasm that, and that affects your room. So that’s delicate.”
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