Recent Flames stuff:
New Kid Eval
I’m used to arguing with people about hockey. It’s how I built an audience - taking relatively unpopular or non-intuitive things and planting a flag. It made for difficult comment sections over the years, but it meant I also stood out in a sea of hockey media passing around conventional wisdom. And sometimes I got stuff right, which was a bonus.
I am mostly out of the habit because I am no longer on the front lines of the cultural battles. The thing that most often rankles readers these days, however, is my prospect evaluation. For three reasons:
1.) I’ve written about a lot of hopefuls over the years. Dozens? Hundreds? And the vast majority of them don’t turn into anything at all. By and large, a kid who is obviously superior to his peers, or a guy who rapidly improves during his development, is most likely to make the NHL. This isn’t true 100% of the time (look at Posipisil this year), but it’s mostly true.
2.) I’ve read the backing research looking at predicting NHLers from the draft and I’m keenly aware of the base rates of drafting success. In any given year, the draft will yield between 40-60 NHL players (20%). And you might find a half dozen true stars (2%). That’s kind of a repeat of the point above, but a little more precise.
3.) Shiny new toy syndrome is seductive. And readily available qualitative scouting reports - thick with adjectives - give excited fans all the tools they need to fantasize that this guy is the one who will buck the percentages.
Point three often stands in opposition to the first two. No one likes to have their parade rained on.
The generally small chances of prospect success often mean you don’t need the benefit of hindsight to predict the future of most kids, nor do you have to spend nights watching them toil in the minors. Unless a youngster is exceptional in some fairly obvious way, he’s usually a 5-percenter at best. But hope springs eternal and is often bolstered by a deep trust in NHL GMs and scouts. You’d be surprised how vigorously fans defended the selection of Hunter Smith in the second round back in my FlamesNation days.
I’ll go and read scouting reports like everyone else, so I’m not above it. And I’ll watch the highlight reels and even attend the training camps. But, in the end, I try to run a pretty simple Bayesian process when it comes to prospect prediction -
1.) Consider the rough base rate success of the draft position in question.
2.) Adjust expectations given the players’ results (are they well below or above similar prospects). Tools like Hockey Prospecting help.
3.) Adjust up or down each season from their D1 to their D5 years, depending on their development.
Example: an NHL club has the 40th overall pick. That’s about a 30% chance of getting an NHLer on average.
Turns out the prospect they draft is a low-offense defensive defender. Ack. Those guys tend to make the NHL at much lower rates. Adjust down to, say, 15%. Over the next few years, the kid’s numbers don’t get any better. You’re probably entering 5-percenter territory.
Of course, this doesn’t mean the chances of this kid being something are literally zero. I add what seems to be an obvious point here because probabilities are not at all intuitive to most people.
We tend to fundamentally “understand” just three things: 0%, 50% and 100%. When most people hear “90%”, they think “100%”. When they hear “5%”, they think 0. It’s not the worst heurisitc. If you have a 5% chance of something happening, it’s okay to just assume zero instead. Don’t bet your life savings on 5%.
But in a situation like the draft which involves hundreds of people and that happens over and over again, it means that sometimes the 5-percenters hit. So, yeah, hope springs eternal.
Markstrom isn’t being mistreated. Just misdirected.
A recent Eric Francis question in a press scrum goaded Jacob Markstrom into expressing his annoyance at the failed NJD trade. There was chatter about whether this represented mistreatment of the player, but I think it’s just a professional getting annoyed at mixed signals.
I noted in my previous piece that wires can get crossed in organizations where purpose, goals, and vision are varying or unclear. Trading away all your UFA’s and then approaching your starter about a trade in the middle of his rebound season suggests a fairly definitive path. Until, of course, the rug pull and subsequent rumours the org wanted to keep him now because “they were playing well.”
I don’t know if this latter bit is face-saving coming out of the front office, but it’s not impossible this was their thinking. It’s no secret that “stay competitive'“ is an overriding mandate that dangles like an anvil over the heads of the team’s execs.
Then why trade Lindholm et al? Well it’s also clear that the club is indelibly scarred by losing Gaudreau for nothing. That debacle kicked the previous regime in the stones, and even with the desperate Huberdeau scramble (temporarily) redeeming things, you can bet Conroy watched the entire affair unfold with horror. Remember, Markstrom is signed for a couple more years. The fear doesn’t exist with him and, hey, maybe he can help them make the playoffs this year, right?
This is why the plan hasn’t clearly been “trade and rebuild” for the majority of this season. That option has been foisted upon the org by the players themselves given they all refused to ink an extension. Each of Tanev, Hanifin, and Lindholm were apparently offered new deals. Not once, but multiple times over the last 6 months. And in the case of Hanifin and Lindholm, sizable, long-term deals. The only reason the Flames are not a mediocre club poised to get slightly older and much more expensive is because the players refused the ring.
“Don’t be embarrassed by a UFA leaving for nothing” has been added to the operating manual, but it doesn’t represent a coherent long-term plan. Because! And stay with me here, keeping Lindholm for $9M per year and trading him at the deadline may both satisfy this requirement but they are exactly opposite courses of action.
You can’t suck and blow at the same time.
Folksy wisdom, I know, but it’s a lesson the Flames will have to learn sooner rather than later. As the top of their roster continues to erode, they’ll gradually sink into the morass, inexorably.
Keeping Lindholm would have been an expensive mistake. Keeping Hanifin would have prevented a step back on the blueline, but also make it more notably expensive, and less efficient. If Tanev somehow circles back and re-signs in Calgary for his 35-year-old season, it won’t be enough to prop up the decline.
Calgary is out of the “tinker and optimize” phase because they have no peak stars around which to anchor the build. They don’t need to improve their roster a little bit. They need to improve it by a currently impossible amount.
Your superstars are gone. Your core veterans are aging. Your next cornerstone guy isn’t currently lurking in the prospect cupboard. The path the Flames need to find is one that makes them much better. Not a bit better for a season or two. Enduringly better.
The cast, such as it is, can hope for another Vezina season from Markstorm before he turns 36 or that Huberdeau will score 115 again, but that is the prerogative of the blindly faithful, not the executives charged with guiding the team forward. Hope isn’t a plan. You can pray at night, just know that your opponents are doing the same.
As such, the typical rules for NHL decision-making don’t really apply to the Flames currently. Concerns about filling that second-pairing gap or finding a new third-line center are sensible in the contention window, but they are shuffling deck chairs in Calgary’s position. The GM has to make the cap floor and ice a hockey team, of course, but the particulars of these decisions aren’t going to be overly important for the next little while.
I’m not saying Conroy needs to become allergic to wins. But…he should at the very least be unconcerned about the club’s record.
The overriding objective for the current regime is to find this franchise’s next era-defining talents. Only rebuilding around the next Iginla, Gaudreau, or Tkachuk will lift this club out of mediocrity. Everything else is digging holes in the desert and filling them in again.