Are these Flames actually worse than the Seattle Kraken we keep laughing at, or is 29th…

Reds, you're betting C$ against your own team's rebuild and calling that insight? Bold strategy. Nobody's answered the actual question hiding under this comparison: worse than Seattle relative to what league context? A 29th-place team in a bottom-heavy season means something different than 29th in a tight table. Where did the rest of the Canadian teams finish? If Calgary's 77 points sits four back of Vancouver and Ottawa, that's a bad season for a middling roster. If they're ten clear of everyone north of the border, that's a franchise problem. Show me the numbers before we crown the Kraken. Jack's right that minus-47 over 82 games is a real signal, though. You don't drift that far under water by accident, and Seattle's comparative results speak for themselves. On your head-to-head point, you've got a fair catch. If October means nothing, the Oct 5 game in Seattle means nothing either. But one game tells you less than one month. My question back: if Calgary takes five of a possible eight points from that opening stretch against Colorado and Vegas, does anyone here revise their take? Or is the conclusion already written? Consistency is my missing criterion. Who was Calgary beating this year, contenders or fellow lottery teams? Beats me, nobody's posted it. Until then, I'm withholding judgment on which of these two clubs is actually less embarrassing. The Canadian Cup drought since '93 says both fanbases should be humble anyway.

Reds asked who Calgary was losing to and Fanatic wants context from the rest of the Canadian teams, and honestly that's the whole answer hiding in plain sight. Neither of you will like it. i've sat through enough rebuilds in a few barns now to tell you one thing: a bad season and a bad roster aren't the same animal, but they eat from the same trough for at least a year, usually two. this club went 34-39 with a minus-47, and you don't stumble into that by playing competitive hockey against contenders. teams auditioning kids don't get caught giving up 47 goals on purpose, they get caught because the depth isn't there yet. that part's normal, back in my day we called it "paying the toll." where i'll push back on Jack's tidy little table is the certainty. seen this movie before. Bottom-five team in april, everyone writes the obituary, then eighteen months later the same core is a wild-card nuisance nobody wants to play. does that mean the Flames get there? no idea. but i also remember Seattle being the laughingstock everyone loved to kick around, and look how that aged. as for the Christmas test, put it to bed already. the october stretch tells you what october stretches always tell you: which goalie is hot and who took the bus too long. oct 5 in seattle, then colorado, anaheim twice, vegas? i've watched openers like that bury good teams and flatter bad ones. if the Kraken are above them on december 25th i won't be shocked, and if calgary claws back five of eight points out of that gauntlet i won't crown them either. what actually decides it over the long run, and it's the only criterion i trust after decades of this: do the kids get real minutes and get better, or do they plateau? points in october don't measure that. april does. march does. january does. everything before halloween is a rumour 😄 so who am i taking today? seattle, on the evidence. ask me again after new year's, like a person who's been burned before.

BadBeat nailed the goalie-hot-streak point, and honestly the schedule itself backs him up more than anyone's noticed: Calgary's first five games aren't just hard, they're asymmetric in a sneaky way. Two of them are against Anaheim, one home, one away - and Anaheim is the only opponent in that stretch where a rebuilding Flames roster should be nominally competitive. So the October read isn't "gauntlet vs. reality," it's actually a two-tier test: the Colorado, Vegas and Seattle games tell you where the gap to real teams is, while the Ducks pair tells you whether Calgary can still beat the teams in their own tax bracket. That second tier is the one I'll actually be tracking in my table, because if they drop points to Anaheim twice, the minus-47 wasn't a one-off, it's the baseline. 📊 A few things I'd add to the pile, in order: 1. Sample size caveat, again: five games in October is roughly 6% of a season. Even a 0-for-5 start moves the playoff odds less than people think. Anyone revising a whole-roster verdict off the Oct 5 game in Seattle is doing vibes-based analysis with a spreadsheet wallpaper. 2. On Fanatic's league-context question, he's right that where Vancouver and Ottawa finished matters, but I'd caution against using it as the deciding criterion. The Canadian divisions have been lumpy for years, so "ten points clear of the neighbours" can describe a franchise problem or just a weird distribution year. The 212-259 goal column over 82 games is the sturdier evidence because it doesn't care about who else had a bad year. 3. Where I part ways slightly with Jack: the 82-game sample is the best evidence we have, yes, but it measures last year's roster, and rebuild rosters are the one type of team where last year's data depreciates fastest. Kids getting real minutes, the trade-deadline churn Reds mentioned, those change the inputs. Context matters here more than in a normal offseason. So my position lands close to BadBeat's: Seattle on the evidence, Christmas proves nothing, and the January-to-April run is where the verdict gets written. Until then I'm updating the table weekly and withholding the obituary.

Zoe's two-tier read on the schedule is the first post in this thread I'd actually sign my name to. The Anaheim pair is the only part of that October stretch with any diagnostic value, and everyone else has been arguing about Colorado and Vegas like playing the Avalanche tells us something we don't already know. It doesn't. We know Calgary is worse than Colorado right now. That was settled before the schedule dropped. One caveat, though: "beat the teams in your own tax bracket" assumes Anaheim stays in that bracket. Two games against a fellow bottom-feeder is a small sample of a small sample, and bad teams split those sweeps constantly. So even the useful tier is only half-load-bearing. Where I'd nudge BadBeat: I like the "kids get real minutes and improve or plateau" criterion, but that's a forward-looking metric and the question in this thread is retrospective, are these Flames worse than the Kraken we keep dunking on? On the evidence we have, the 82-game minus-47 says yes, and I don't see a way around that. You can argue the data depreciates fast in a rebuild, and fine, concede it might. On condition that someone shows me which pieces actually changed. Nobody in this thread has named one. Until then "last year's data doesn't count" is just a nicer way of saying gut feeling, and gut feeling is what people reach for when they can't be bothered to look anything up. For what it's worth, I work with monitoring dashboards all day, and the rookie-mistake version of this argument is exactly what most of you are doing: staring at a five-day blip instead of the year-long trend line. October 5 in Seattle will generate forty hot takes and about zero information.

Nah hold on, FaithfulLoyal says nobody named a changed piece like that kills the argument, but you know what actually kills it for me? WE'RE A DRIVER TEAM, that's the whole point 😤 Been saying this since march, you don't judge a rebuild by points, you judge it by whether the kids were still trying in game 78. I watched almost every night and that team gave up minus-47 while still skating hard most nights. That's a depth problem, not a quit problem. Bad beat's "paying the toll" post is dead on tbh. And to Reds' point about Seattle being "one piece away" forever. That's exactly why I'm not panicking. At least we're TEARING DOWN on purpose instead of pretending year after year. If the Kraken outplace us by Christmas I'll eat it and admit it, sure. But two games vs Anaheim is the only real test in that October run and everyone knows it. Split those and I'm fine. We'll be okay. Ah well, nowt to do but wait for the opener 🔥💪

watching you all argue about october like it's a science fair, i half expect someone to hand out ribbons 😄 back in my day we just called a bad season a bad season and went to the game anyway. anyhow, here's my problem with this whole thread: everyone's so busy building tables and tiers that nobody's asking the simple question - worse than Seattle at WHAT, exactly? at collecting lottery balls? sure. at making a saturday at the Saddledome worth the parking money? that's not on any spreadsheet. FaithfulLoyal, you want someone to name a changed piece before last year's data counts. Fair enough, but by that standard nobody can prove anything until the puck drops either way, so we're all just holding opinions dressed up as evidence. Zoe, your two-tier Ducks thing is clever, i'll give you that, but bad teams don't split evenly, they split the way the wind blows that night. i've sat through enough of those barns to know a "tax bracket" game can go sideways in six minutes. and StandsGuy, "they were still skating in game 78" - i love the heart, truly, but the 94-95 Jets skated hard too. effort is the cheapest thing to praise in a 34-win season. here's my honest take after watching as long as I have: 77 points with a minus-47 is a real hole, no way to sugar it, and Seattle earned the right to be smug for about one news cycle. but Reds betting a few C$ against his own club and calling it a plan is the most rebuild-fan thing i've read all week, and i say that with love 😉 oct 5 will tell us nothing. the Ducks pair will tell us a little. christmas will tell the loudmouths nothing and the patient ones everything. keep your hat on, winter's long.

Kev's "effort is the cheapest thing to praise" line is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a guy who thinks parking money is a valid metric 🤡 Mate, you can't wave off skating hard in game 78 by invoking the 94-95 Jets and then turn around and say December tells "the patient ones everything." Pick a lane. Either effort means nothing until results show up, or it means something - you keep swapping criteria whenever one gets uncomfortable. And since you lot love demanding evidence: nobody's shown me Seattle's roster got anything but older and slower, yet suddenly I'm the one on trial here? What's the Kraken's ROI on being everyone's punchline for three years? 😏 I'd happily remind people of their own predictions about that club, but the fanboys will pile in soon enough with their spreadsheets so I'll save them the trouble. Here's the honest version: minus-47 stinks, 77 points stinks, agreed. But the thread question is whether they're WORSE than Seattle, and the Flames get two cracks at Anaheim right away, Oct 11 at home, Oct 14 away, where the gap should be zero. Split those and I'm not sweating the Colorado and Vegas games, those were losses the day the schedule came out, everyone pretending otherwise is putting a prop on the weather. If the Kraken are above us by Christmas, fine, I'll take my lumps and my minus-47 with them. But if we bank four points off the Ducks and the gap is a coin-flip by New Year's, I want Kev to admit " skating hard" counted for something. Sure thing, mate? 😂

I'll take FaithfulLoyal's challenge seriously, since it's the only demand in this thread with actual teeth: name the pieces that changed before you're allowed to discount the 82-game minus-47. The uncomfortable answer, from where I sit with my tables, is that a rebuild roster's biggest "changed piece" usually doesn't show up on a transaction list at all. It shows up as internal ice-time redistribution. Last year Calgary had a chunk of minutes soaked by veterans who won't be here in two years. If the training-camp depth chart shifts even 6-8 minutes of even-strength time toward the kids, you've genuinely changed the inputs without signing a soul, and the depreciation argument Zoe made becomes legitimate rather than convenient. The catch, and this is where I side with FaithfulLoyal anyway, is that nobody can verify that redistribution until the games actually happen. So his standard stands, just with a narrower escape hatch than he thinks. One thing I'd add on the comparative question, because it keeps getting flattened into "minus-47 vs. whatever Seattle did": context matters when you compare two bad seasons, because a 77-point team built on a leaky defence and a 77-point team built on a toothless offence age very differently. The 212-259 split tells you Calgary's problem was structural at both ends, but the shape of it, how the goals against were distributed across the schedule - is the part of my table I trust most for projecting forward. Blowout losses cluster when a tired bottom-six gets cycled out by contenders; that pattern corrects faster than a power-play that never scored. I can't quantify that from the summary line alone, which is exactly why I'm not crowning anyone in October. On StandsGuyUltra's Anaheim coin-flip: splitting the Ducks pair tells you almost nothing on its own, agreed with FaithfulLoyal there, two games is a sample so small the puck line on either of them carries more noise than signal. What I'd actually watch is HOW: if Calgary wins one of those by controlling play and loses the other on a bad goalie night, that's a different roster than if they get outshot by a fellow lottery team twice. The Nov-through-January stretch against mid-tier clubs is where my weekly updates start meaning something. Until then, everything in this thread - including mine. Is a well-dressed prior.

RideOrDieZone, that ice-time redistribution answer is the first one in this thread that actually attempts to meet FaithfulLoyal's challenge instead of dodging it, so credit there. But I'd press on the caveat you buried at the end: if the only changed piece is 6-8 minutes of even-strength time shuffled toward the kids, that's a hypothesis until someone shows the actual deployment numbers from camp. Sounds good but show me the numbers. A depth chart in September has been wrong before. FaithfulLoyal's point stands mostly intact for me too. The minus-47 over 82 games is the only evidence in this thread that doesn't require believing anything, and I notice everyone arguing against it reaches for October games that haven't been played yet. That's telling. Where I'd add my own wrinkle: StandsGuyUltra is right about one thing, oddly. Seattle being older and slower is a claim nobody's substantiated either, so if we're demanding receipts from Flames optimists, the Kraken side of the ledger deserves the same audit. Consistency or nothing. My personal detail: I've got the opener circled because a mate of mine is a Kraken season ticket holder and I owe him dinner if Calgary finishes below them. I set that bet in June precisely because I trust the goal column more than anyone's feeling about effort. If the Ducks pair goes sideways, I might be eating that dinner with a smile. So, conditional agreement: the rebuild-depreciation argument gets respect on condition that the training-camp minutes data actually backs it up by, say, ten games in. Until then I'm with FaithfulLoyal, 29th place with a minus-47 is

honestly the minus-47 stuff gets repeated like a prayer in here 😱 yeah it stinks, we all watched it stink, nobody's saying 29th was fine but ValueDan asking for receipts on both sides, THAT I can get behind 🙌 everyone's auditing our boys like it's tax season while Seattle gets a free pass off vibes alone. you just know half those Kraken takes came from one highlights package and a meme here's my thing, watching almost every game last year, the goal diff lies a bit imo. we'd hang with good teams for 50 mins then leak three in the third coz the bench was paper thin. that's a roster missing pieces, that's a bad LUCK gap ya know? fixable. the kids weren't the problem, the depth was 🔥 KevReds saying effort is cheap, nah man. try watching a 34-win team mail it in by new years, THEN talk to me about cheap effort. my heart says that group cared and I'll die on that hill 💪 opener in Seattle Oct 5, whatever. ducks pair Oct 11

My kid's hockey card spreadsheet taught me one thing early: two players can have the same point total and be completely different assets, and I think that's exactly where this thread has landed, whether people realise it or not. So here's my read of where the room actually sits, and I'll keep it structured because that's how I keep my own tables honest 📊 **The consensus I'm seeing:** Most of us lean towards "bad season, not bad roster, but with an asterisk". The key point behind that lean is the shape of the 212-259. A team that quits doesn't put 212 goals up; a team missing depth does. StandsGuyFaithful's game-78 observation and Ben_TillIDie's third-period collapses both point the same direction — the losses clustered when the bottom-six got exposed, which RideOrDieZone rightly flagged as the correctable failure mode. Effort is the cheapest thing to praise when you're wrong, but KevReds overplayed his hand there, and even ValueDan conceded the audit has to cut both ways. For "the rebuild is already failing / worse than Seattle", the counter-argument is the one FaithfulLoyal keeps landing: there's a nuance here, because the minus-47 over 82 games is the only completed evidence in this entire thread. Everything optimistic points to unplayed October dates and hypothetical camp minutes. You can't discount actual goals against on the promise of redistributed ice time. ValueDan said it plainly and it holds. **My own condition, as always:** small sample though. The Oct 5 opener tells us nothing, the Ducks pair Oct 11 and 14 is a coin-flip sample, and anyone grading the rebuild off three weeks of schedule is grading weather. The number I actually want by ten games in is the deployment split, if the kids took real even-strength minutes from the departing veterans, the depreciation argument earns its place in my table. If the depth chart came back identical, then 29th place with 77 points starts looking like a floor, and Seattle outplacing us by Christmas stops being a laughing matter. Depends how you count it, but the room's verdict is roughly: Calgary stays above Seattle through Christmas, then we re-audit. Bring the Anaheim games.

FaithfulLoyal, define "worse" first, worse at what? If we mean goal differential, sure, the minus-47 speaks for itself. If we mean roster construction and future value, now you're comparing two different jobs. Seattle gets laughed at because they have no history to defend; Calgary gets audited because expectations were higher. Same evidence standard should apply to both.