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Calgary Flames: Jay Feaster...What Have You Done?

September 3, 2013, 11:43 AM ET [59 Comments]
Colin Dambrauskas
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With the first week of September comes the Young Stars Classic which will feature several notable NHL prospects from the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, San Jose Sharks and Winnipeg Jets.

As the Classic approaches, many fans begin to gaze over the rosters filled with prospects from each respective team and out come the comparisons. Well, I did just the same thing last week as I broke down the roster and schedules for the tournament which lead to this blog. As I dug for more information about said prospect tournament, it really opened my eyes as to what Flames GM Jay Feaster really had to work with when he started.

Needless to say, the Flames were an ageing team 3-4 years ago and were quite bare when it came to prospects. So what has changed? It seems after years of trading away youth and picks to remain in a desperate playoff hunt, the Flames changed their mindset and starting exercising patience when Feaster took over.

Though not an immediate transition, Feaster would eventually stop signing or acquiring older players and would solely focus on the acquisition of young and smart hockey players to help this franchise strengthen. Below is the roster for the 2010 Young Stars Classic which was held in September, a few months prior to Jay Feaster superseding Darryl Sutter as GM.

Goaltenders: Leland Irving, Matt Keetley and Cam Lanigan

Defensemen: Chris Been, TJ Brodie, Matt Clarke, Joey Leach, Josh Meyers, John Negrin, Giffen Nyren and Keith Seabrook.

Forwards: John Armstrong, Mikael Backlund, Carter Bancks, Spencer Bennett, Henrik Bjorklund, Lance Bouma, Bryan Cameron, Hugo Carpentier, Michael Ferland, Ryley Grantham, Patrick Holland, Ryan Howse, Logan MacMillan, Greg Nemisz, Gaelan Patterson, Max Reinhart, Jon Rheault and Mitch Wahl

I suppose what stands out the most for me out of the list is the fact that there are barely a handful of players who have really graduated in their careers since taking part in the tournament three years ago. While I wouldn’t expect a large number of these players to make the NHL, the Flames have but three players who have played full time in the past three seasons. 3 out of 29 isn’t exactly…good, but I digress.

Since 2010, Jay Feaster has been busy with respect to trying to repopulate the Flames prospective cupboards. As mentioned, there wasn’t exactly a whole lot to work with when the GM took over and the Flames didn’t exactly look “great” during the tournament. The 2013 tournament, however, is starting to look a little better and also gives fans a much better idea of what it is that Feaster has done since taking over. Given that most of the moves/transactions to date have not been realized, these prospect games allows fans to better assess what some of these young players have to add to the organization.

As I provided last week, here is the 2013 roster expected to play in the Young Stars Classic on Thursday. Seems to me that there is an evident difference in talent in just three years.


GOALTENDERS: Laurent Brossoit, Joni Ortio

DEFENCEMEN: Patrick Sieloff, Tyler Wotherspoon, Ryan Culkin, Zach Davies, Keegan Kanzig, Brett Kulak, John Ramage, Eric Roy

FORWARDS: Sven Baertschi, Turner Elson, Morgan Klimchuk, Corban Knight, Sean Monahan, Linden Penner, Emile Poirier, Max Reinhart, Michael Ferland, Coda Gordon, Markus Granlund, Ben Hanowski, Ryan Howse, Josh Jooris

While it’s tough to judge just how many of these young players could have an impact themselves, I argue that the depth here is much greater. Furthermore, it could almost be argued that the Flames may have started their “rebuild” about two years ago when they started moving older players and bringing in younger and younger ones.

Just a thought, but I like to take different angles on the whole “rebuild” other than when the team was “blown up”.

Thanks for reading!
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