3. Calgary Flames
After making several offseason moves, including trading for Travis Hamonic, the Calgary Flames looked like a playoff team on paper. But that’s why they play the games. At one point, the Flames won seven straight games and looked like a Stanley Cup dark horse. During the streak, they had a perfect blend of scoring, defense and goaltending.
However, the Flames couldn’t get it together consistently after that. Since winning that seventh straight game on Jan. 14, Calgary has three losing streaks of at least four games and two lasting at least six games.
The Flames bet heavily on Hamonic and Michael Stone bouncing back from a horrible season and numerous injuries, respectively. Both are bets which didn’t pay off, as they didn’t have even close to the impact they were expected to have. Brett Kulak somehow played in 69 games while promising blueline prospect Rasmus Andersson only played in eight.
Calgary has elite talent. There’s no excuse for missing the postseason when you have Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Mark Giordano, Dougie Hamilton, Mikael Backlund and Matthew Tkachuk. But the Flames got horrible production from their bottom six forwards and bottom two defensemen. Considering Troy Brouwer, Curtis Lazar, Kulak and Stone were among the most used options, this shouldn’t be surprising.
The Flames would love to go back to October. Maybe they get a healthy Jaromir Jagr if they sign him a bit earlier. Perhaps Kris Versteeg doesn’t get injured and is a more consistent producer on the third line. But the Flames would probably like to go back even further and make some smarter decisions about who to invest significant resources into.