It has been exactly eleven years since the Calgary Flames traded their best player to ever play for the franchise—Jarome Iginla—to the Pittsburgh Penguins, a move that signified the start of a rebuild and a fresh slate for the Flames to build to try and compete once again.
This was the last time the Flames ever went into a full rebuild, and it all started with the trade that sent Iginla out east to try and get him a Stanley Cup.
An underwhelming return for Iginla
The trade that sent Iginla to the Penguins is a tough one to look back on. In the lockout-shortened season, the Flames were a bad, bad team. They finished 13th in the Western Conference that season and it was another year that the Flames would miss the playoffs with Iginla on their roster.
It was the final year of Iginla’s deal and at the age of 35, the writing was on the wall and it was clear that this would be the final season Iginla would play in a Flames uniform. As the trade deadline in 2013 approached, the Flames started gauging options for Iginla, but with Iginla having a full no-movement clause in his contract, it would ultimately be Iginla’s say on where he ended up playing.
It looked like it was going to be the Boston Bruins that Iginla would end up playing for, but a last-minute change of heart for Iginla sent him to the Pittsburgh Penguins instead to reunite with Olympic linemate, Sidney Crosby. In return for the Hall-of-Famer, the Flames received Kenny Agostino, Ben Hanowski and a first-round pick in 2013.
Even at the time, the return didn’t seem like enough, but with the circumstances at play, the return was deemed to be fine and nothing more. Agostino and Hanowski both had NHL promise, but neither of them were seen as superstars of the future. The first-round pick that year was used on Morgan Klimchuk, once again, a pick that seemed underwhelming when it was made.
Klimchuk, Agostino, and Hanowski would play a combined 27 games for Calgary before not being a part of the organization anymore. It was an absolutely lacklustre return for Iginla as those should have been three of the main pieces of the Flames’ next core group of players.
The beginning of a true rebuild
While trading Iginla was a massive move in itself, the Flames were not finished making trades that season. Jay Bouwmeester and Blake Comeau were also traded prior to the trade deadline that season, and Alex Tanguay and Cory Sarich were moved that summer.
It was time to get some young blood into the lineup.
The draft for the Flames in 2013, however, did not go all that well. The Flames had three first-round picks and only hit on one of them, that being Sean Monahan at sixth overall. They selected Emile Poirier with the 22nd pick, and he would only play one NHL game. The aforementioned Klimchuk was selected at 28th overall.
The Flames would make six more picks in that draft, and not one of them would play a single NHL game for the Flames, the only player that saw some NHL action was their seventh-round pick John Gilmour, as he played 37 games between the Buffalo Sabres and the New York Rangers. It was certainly a tough start for the rebuilding Flames.
The Flames got lucky though, after having some major misses in the drafts from 2012 to 2014, they had a great draft in 2015 and already had Johnny Gaudreau in the pipeline, they then added Matthew Tkachuk in 2016, and the core was set. Between Monahan, Gaudreau and Tkachuk, the Flames had three players that they thought would bring them to the promised land. We know now that it was never meant to be.
Time to do the rebuild right this time around
If the end of the Iginla era in Calgary taught us one thing, it’s that if you are going to tear it down, you have to get it right. As we all know, the Flames under their previous management did not get it right. When it came to their draft picks and scouting, it was outright disastrous.
The most important part of any rebuild involves making the correct picks and then developing those picks as best as you possibly can to turn them into game-breaking NHL talent. There are going to be misses—that will always be the reality of drafting—but that is what Craig Conroy is going to be tasked with, making the fewest amount of mistakes as possible to ensure they do not waste another era of the Calgary Flames.
