The Conference Finals are upon us, and that means Calgary Flames fans have been discussing the offseason for almost six weeks. While Edmonton Oilers fans enjoy patio beers and playoff hockey, Flames fans are stuck with looking forward to a, hopefully, bright future. With Calgary in the middle (I guess) of a rebuild, watching your biggest rival compete for their second consecutive Finals appearance stings a little worse.
Looking at the final four franchises competing for Lord Stanley’s Cup, they all have had a unique recipe for success in building perennial Stanley Cup-contending teams. That got us thinking, if the Flames were to try to replicate any of these teams’ plans, whose would it be? We asked, you answered.
Want to take part in Sunday Census polls? We send them out every week on our Twitter at @wincolumnCGY. Follow along or send in ideas for the next poll!
Team-building role models
We presented the following question to our readers:
Edmonton Oilers
Surprisingly, the Oilers did not finish last in this week’s poll. With roughly 8% of the votes, Edmonton narrowly beats out Carolina for the team Flames fans want to emulate the least on their way to Cup contention. The Oilers’ roster development isn’t really a big secret. For the better part of a decade, the franchise master plan was to beat their head against the wall every single year in hopes of winning the rights to draft a generational talent.
I’m sure if you asked Craig McTavish, Steve Tambellini, or Kevin Lowe, they might disagree. After that trio had mostly departed Edmonton’s front office, things started to click after drafting Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid in back-to-back years. Slowly but surely, the tides turned after a single playoff appearance under General Manager Peter Chiarelli in 2017.
It’s no big surprise that the Oilers were the beneficiaries of a lot of luck. It may have taken four first overall picks, but the rebuilding chapter in Edmonton has finally closed. Sure, they have had a solid defensive showing this offseason, and the acquisitions of players like Evan Bouchard, Mattias Ekholm, and Corey Perry have all been crucial for the team’s success over the past few seasons.
But, the lottery pick until we die and then sign and trade for veterans looking to compete isn’t a plan Flames fans can get on board with. The biggest issue is that Murray Edwards would rather pay for Scotia Place in cash than be willing to lose hockey games. It was a long shot for the Oilers that paid off huge; however, it is not ideal.
Dallas Stars
The great, big, beautiful franchise that is the Dallas Stars. Craig Conroy would never admit it—he has, numerous times—but the guy is kind of a Stars fan. It appears our voters this week are as well. The Stars were the landslide victors in this week’s poll, with over half of the votes. Conroy’s love for the Stars resides mostly in the outstanding work their scouting department and front office have done at the draft in recent years.
Starting in 2017, the Stars had maybe one of the strongest team draft classes in NHL history. Miro Heiskanen (third), Jake Oettinger (26th), and Jason Robertson (39th) were the first three players selected by the Stars that year. The three have combined to play over a thousand NHL games while all emerging as franchise-calibre players. In 2018, they followed it up with Ty Dellandrea, who was thirteenth overall, and Thomas Harley in 2019. In 2020, Mavrik Bourque and in 2021, Wyatt Johnston and Logan Stankoven.
It’s been nothing but home runs in the first and second rounds from Dallas, and it extends back all the way to 2015 if you include Roope Hintz at 49th overall. Dallas has drafted and developed their talent exceptionally well for the last decade, and that’s why everyone wants what they have.
There are certainly other factors that play into it contractually with no state tax, but outside of the recent acquisition and signing of Mikko Rantanen, the Stars haven’t gone big-name hunting really whatsoever. Last season’s Flames draft class has certainly aged well. Here’s to hoping Craig Conroy’s unhealthy obsession with his competition is more than just a crush.
Carolina Hurricanes
I don’t know how to say this in any other way: Carolina’s franchise is just plain weird. They play lockdown defensive hockey that, at points, is less exciting than Ron Maclean’s intermission soliloquies. The coach implementing said system is their former Stanley Cup-winning captain, a certified gym rat who looks like he dropped a 45lb plate on his nose from a career full of eating right hooks.
Sounds pretty old school, right? Well, their General Manager, Eric Tulsky, is a career scientist with a double major from Harvard in Chemistry and Physics, a PhD in Chemistry from Cal-Berkley, and two years of post-doctorate research at the United States Naval Research Laboratory. That’s just his education. After leaving his post-doc, Tulsky worked for a decade in Silicon Valley developing nanotechnology before casually starting a Philadelphia Flyers fan blog in 2011 to fill his spare time.
Tulsky’s love of baseball encouraged him to explore the analytical side of hockey through a similarly critical lens as baseball does. Almost ten years after speaking on his possession metrics at a MIT Sports Analytics Conference in 2013, Tulsky went from Silicon Valley scientist working for the Carolina Hurricanes part-time, to being named the team’s General Manager.
Although fans think Carolina is the worst option, they’re the best in some ways. They have an old-school coach who plays a deep, playoff-style system that’s built on trust in your teammates and opportunistic freedom offensively. On the team-building side of things, they’ve drafted and developed talent very well, and they now have one of the most forward-thinking people in hockey at the helm of their front office. Carolina always seems to be slept on, maybe this is finally the year they can break past the Conference Final.
Florida Panthers
Anyone a fan of taxes? Nobody on the Florida Panthers is, and 35% of our respondents this week aren’t either. The defending Stanley Cup champions are kind of the rockstars of hockey, with none of the attention. It was a major topic of conversation after their Game 7 victory against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Former Flame, Matthew Tkachuk, cited the amount of pressure the Leafs face and how it crumbles their team when it really matters. Tkachuk continued to allude to the lack of attention in Florida being attractive to players. Sadly, he’s right. There isn’t anywhere near the attention towards the Panthers locally as any Canadian market would have.
Mix that with the lack of state tax, a winning culture, and golf year-round, and you get a pretty attractive destination for free agents. The Panthers have made their fair share of trades, but players are willing to take pay cuts on paper that actually result in more dough than a Canadian market, or, say, if you played in California. This massing of strong trades, signings, and cultural buy-in has been wildly successful for the Panthers.
For any market that doesn’t have those same “perks”, it can be hard to replicate. I really don’t like to whine about salary cap or competitive advantage financially when athletes are extremely well paid, even hockey players, but this is becoming an issue in the NHL. It could be time for the CBA to be adjusted in accordance with state tax, with the large increases to the salary cap over the next three seasons only making matters worse in an economic climate between Canada and the United States that continues to be divided.
Long story short, it’s impossible to replicate, and the gaps are only going to grow.
Our own recipe
Obviously, numerous factors contribute to the “team building” aspect of constructing a Stanley Cup-contending roster, and no two situations will be the same, even remotely. There is, however, a lot of merit in recognizing your mistakes and looking to learn from your peers. Craig Conroy has no shame in admiring a franchise like the Dallas Stars. Quite frankly, he thinks everyone else is crazy for not trying to emulate their plan to some degree.
Drafting and developing talent in-house is still one of the largest parts of building a winning franchise. All of the teams competing in the conference finals have key players in their lineups who were all drafted and developed within that franchise’s system. As much as I just blabbed about taxes, the salary cap is still a restriction, and LTIR can only stretch the envelope so much more. There still has to be a collection of brains at the top making the right calls and watching the right players come up through the ranks, only in hopes that they’ll call the right name on draft day.
Here’s to hoping that whatever plan is in place works.
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