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It's painfully obvious that there's a mismatch between Sutter and Huberdeau. Huberdeau excels in space, Sutter's checking style means he's required to play tight. Huberdeau will outlast Sutter, Sutter will be here to start next year, but he won't make it through the 2023-24 season. Sutter's demanding style is already weighing on the players (their inconsistency is directly tied to their willingness to play or not play that style).

Huberdeau's contract will age fine, his skillset will age much better than Kadri's. That contract was a mistake, Tre essentially bought a slightly more skilled Backlund for way more than what Backlund will cost you after his next deal and for way more term than Backlund would've wanted.

The Flames have 6 UFAs and 2 RFAs at the end of next year They're currently slotted:

Dube(RFA)-Lindholm(UFA)-Toffoli(UFA)
X-X-X
X-Backlund-X
X-Ruzicka(RFA)-X

Hanifin(UFA)-X
Tanev(UFA-X
Zadorov(UFA)-X

Whether they get traded this offseason or next season, there's potential for some significant turnover ahead of the 2024-25 season.

And going into the 2024-25 season there's 4 seasons of Kadri and 6 seasons of Huberdeau left... Kadri should be your third or fourth line centre for those season while Huberdeau should be your second or third line winger. Just remember they'll be using 17.5M of your cap playing those roles. Yikes!
 
I'm not sure what to make of Sutter. He has the hardware, but lately I have begun to wonder if he might be the main problem. We never really did get a clear answer about why Gaudreau and Tkachuk left, and I always wondered if it was partly due to Sutter. Also with the Huberdeau situation it makes me wonder if there are other players not wanting to play for him. I mean, even when they were playing well last year, you couldn't get a positive comment from Sutter about his players. There's also his recent comment about Pelletier. None of the players are going to like that.
 
Well they made up for that. The Flames were outshooting Arizona 30-8 and were down 3-1. I figured last night was the game the wheels would finally fall off, but they scored 5 straight, outshot Arizona 52-14. HUberdeau looked better last night, still can't buy a goal. I think this team hits more posts than any team I've seen before too. They are so close to being a really great team, but costly mistakes are still far too frequent. Not sure where to go from here, they have some cap room available with Kylington's salary coming off the books (not sure if that was 100% confirmed yet though), adding someone who is good at scoring might help.
 
I can't decide whether to root for them to make the playoffs, or just give up and start looking to the future. You're right....they're close to being a really good team, but then games like Ottawa or Philly come along, and it makes you think they're just not good enough, and maybe it's time to plan for the next rebuild cycle.

Me, personally. I think the team has a window of a couple of seasons to do something with the core they have, and if they don't get anywhere, time to rebuild.
 
I think Huberdeau would still be a valuable commodity for some team. Even though last year was a career season the last few years he’s been generally appoint a game type of player, which is pretty solid.
He has a big contract, though, that was the only thing I was concerned about with the flames when they signed them was the length of the term.
 
The next two games are crucial games for the Flames. They’re all crucial games, but these next two feel like the make or break of the season IMO.
My prediction. If they lose the next two games, they are done for the year.
 
After the next two games there will be 20 games, so still enough time for them to catch up. If they went 13-7 over that last stretch they would likely be in a playoff spot.

That said, they need to go 13-7. I'm not confident it would happen. Seattle seems to be sliding though, so who knows.
 
Surrealplaces said:
After the next two games there will be 20 games, so still enough time for them to catch up. If they went 13-7 over that last stretch they would likely be in a playoff spot.

That said, they need to go 13-7. I'm not confident it would happen. Seattle seems to be sliding though, so who knows.
Click to expand...
My next paycheque says they won’t go 13 and 7 over the next 20 games. They started the season at 5–0 and now they are 27-21. For the whole season they are basically one game over 500.
Seattle is sliding, but all season they have gone in streaks and right now they are in a losing streak, winning 3 of their last 10, they’ve done this before in the season and they turn it around.
I hate to be a downer, but IMO it’s time to stick a fork in the Flames they’re done.
 
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