The hockey gods are speaking this season, and you won’t like what they’re saying. Your team is broken, your plan has failed, and your fans deserve better. And your stewardship of this franchise has been nothing short of negligent.
The evidence is damning
Ninety-six points last season—yet another playoff miss. Three straight years watching from home. This is Calgary’s reality: good enough to ruin draft position, not good enough to contend.
Dustin Wolf’s exceptional goaltending masked deep structural problems all year. Without it, this is an 82–85 point team that can’t score. Now the mask is off. Four wins through seventeen games and 2.12 goals per game.
The gods have rendered their judgment.
The poison of false hope
Three decades of institutional failure speak for themselves. No sustained success. No championship. Just an endless loop of mediocrity, disguised as competitiveness.
That 2004 Cup run? It wasn’t a blueprint; it was a curse. It convinced this franchise that lightning strikes were a strategy, that “just get in and anything can happen” was an acceptable organizational philosophy. But it isn’t. That thinking is a cancer.
The Flames exist in purgatory—forever circling the middle. Too stubborn to rebuild, too thin to rise. Loyalty has become stagnation. The organization rewards seniority over ambition, producing teams that look stable but play lifelessly.
The cycle you cannot break
This franchise is trapped in institutional trauma, repeating the same failed patterns while expecting different results. You’ve resisted the necessary rebuild for years, clinging to the delusion that one more veteran, one more “push,” will change everything. It won’t.
Last season proved this perfectly. After trading Elias Lindholm, Chris Tanev, Noah Hanifin, and Jacob Markstrom, the rebuild was finally supposed to begin. Instead, the team started 5–0–1. A burst of competitiveness that accomplished nothing except sabotaging draft position. Fans were split between false hope and justified frustration, knowing these wins would only extend the suffering.
That split represents organizational failure, Mr. Edwards. Your fans understand what you refuse to accept.
The hockey gods are forcing your hand. Winter is here. You can resist it and prolong the agony, or you can embrace it and emerge stronger. I know which you prefer—you’ve always chosen autumn. Temperate. Safe. Forgettable. Your franchise management reflects this perfectly. Risk-averse. Politically convenient. Strategically paralyzed.
But short-term fixes are your specialty, aren’t they?
Let’s be honest: the pattern is predictable.
You don’t like to throw in the towel. You’re trying to line up a palatable timeline with the new arena. You want to keep veterans around just long enough to sell hope, avoid an embarrassing bottom-out, and preserve a mirage of competitiveness.
But the danger isn’t the rebuild. The danger is the short-term fix you’ll inevitably reach for instead. Stop pretending this season is different. Stop pretending this situation is salvageable.
What your fans are telling you
Your fans are screaming at you. They deserve the rebuild. They deserve top-three picks. And they deserve multiple years of elite draft capital to build something sustainable.
Walk through the Saddledome concourse. Read the comments sections. Listen to the sports radio calls. Your fanbase has unified around one message: tear it down and do it right. They want the team to tank for a lottery position, targeting elite prospects. They want veterans traded for futures. And they want honesty about the path forward.
You’ve ignored them for years. Fate won’t be so accommodating. This is a strong draft class. It’s going to take courage—someone standing up and saying, “people aren’t going to like this, but this is what we need to do.”
Elite talent comes from the top of the draft. Gavin McKenna. Landon DuPont. These are franchise-altering prospects. Take your shot.
Yes, top picks can fail. The Edmonton Oilers’ “decade of darkness” is right there for examination. But you know what has a 100% failure rate? Picking 15th overall while convincing yourself you’re “competitive.” That strategy has produced exactly zero championships in thirty-plus years.
The rot runs deep
Let’s address what everyone can see: your organizational culture is diseased. When Kevin Bieksa publicly called out Yegor Sharangovich for quitting on a play during a blowout, he exposed systemic apathy. Flames fans accept losing as part of the building process. They cannot accept players who don’t care.
This same culture drove Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk away. It destroys talented players who arrive. It guarantees perpetual mediocrity. There are only three solutions: win enough to flush the system, change ownership, or rebuild completely.
You won’t sell. You can’t win. One option remains.
The bill comes due
The fans who subsidize your profits deserve honesty. The taxpayers financing your new arena deserve respect. Neither has received it.
As Bob Stauffer noted on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast: “It has to come from ownership. The owner has to agree to it, otherwise it doesn’t work.” This is your responsibility, Mr. Edwards. Stop hiding behind general managers and coaches. Stop deploying institutional proxies to deliver carefully crafted non-answers.
Face your fanbase. Explain your plan. Justify three decades of failure. Because if you can’t—or won’t—then what, exactly, are you offering this city?
What comes next?
This team does not need another speech from the GM or a reshuffle behind the bench. It needs leadership with the courage to face the cold. It needs a public acknowledgment that the current model has failed.
The team needs you, Mr. Edwards, to stop pretending it’s autumn—and accept that winter is here.
Rebuilds are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of maturity. A recognition that pretending is more dangerous than starting over. You won’t be remembered for avoiding the pain. You’ll be remembered for whether you had the vision to build something real.
Right now, you’re not just failing your team—you’re betraying a city that has given you everything, and gotten nothing in return.
The gods have spoken. The fans are still waiting. What will you do?
