ScorchStack Issue #10 - We'll Do Anything This Game Lets Us Do
10 issues already? Wow, I can't believe a full year has already passed
We’ve hit double digits in issues. Hopefully the Calgary Flames also do this with points.
What’s inside?
The Future of the Flames is made of Virtual Insanity, and Mike fixes it by becoming the new GM in NHL 21.
Are the new guys any good? Not really. But are they good social media follows? Maybe!
Brad Treliving has bought out some players in his day. Which one is your favourite?
Given the choice, would you rather have Joakim Nordstrom or pants?
Since last week
All the money in the world was spent on a couple of guys, and we tried to figure out if Brad Treliving and all of his men can put the Flames together again. This was a Humpty Dumpty reference that did not pan out.
Are you dying to know who wins the Hyundai Cup? Nathan found out while sitting through Ravjeer Singh’s journey to the middle in Breakway, the latest in our Burn The Tape movie reviews.
The Flames re-signed Andrew Mangiapane to a really great deal. None of us thought to tackle that this week.
The Scorchstack Hivemind GM Saves Digital Calgary
Thanks Bradley, but we got this
By Mike (@mikepfeil_)
NHL 21 came out and everyone’s garbage son is online with their garbage friends playing what is commonly known as “CHEL” by youths of today. I don’t understand the youth of today one bit nor do I understand the fascination with CHEL but here I am. Back in my day, we watched the intro to NHL ‘99 on repeat because there was nothing greater than hearing Jim Hughson scream “great save, Joseph!” at the top of his lungs, overlayed on top of the tortured crooning of David Bowie bellowing out “we can be heroes”.
With hockey not returning for some time and general uncertainty about the future of sports as the plague continues to kill countless individuals, we have to make do with what we have. In this exercise, the collective of the Scorchstack staff will help run this organization with me. It’s also an exercise in misery because many of you will grow to hate us during this.
We’ll fix the bathrooms, add more sinks for visiting Edmontonians to piss in. We’ll trade players in a world where they can be traded. We’ll put players in positions to succeed, or dismally produce until they demand a trade out of digital Calgary. We might even kill the mascot in the basement of the Saddledome, drawing a pentagram on the floor in his blood and summoning Scorch back from the maws of hell. We’ll do anything this game lets us do.
Taking Over the Flames - It’s Just Business, Brad.
We took a different course of action when it comes to franchise mode: we made a powerpoint. We wanted to impress Flames ownership and convince them that a hive mind of millennials could run things better than some hockey men.
We’re very smart individuals, and as you can see everything about this is easy to follow.
With that, they had seen enough from our sales pitch. We were handed the keys to the 2014 Toyota Corolla that is the Flames and we moved in just days after the draft and beginning of free agency. Now-former general manager Brad Treliving already signed Chris Tanev and Jacob Markstrom, so we only have $3.563M in cap space to work with. The immediate needs are clear: fire Brad Treliving and then add additional scoring threat among the forward group. Bye Brad, we will keep a picture of you on our desk.
Look at this damn roster and tell me if there is a chance in high hell they can be competitive:
Step one was moving the lines around to identify what gaps exist and where to start working.
We reunited Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, and Elias Lindholm together for now. Our darling shit-heel son Matthew Tkachuk will continue with his father Mikael Backlund, and newly re-signed Andrew Mangiapane will work alongside them; The trio should be effective in a digital world where they could be sacrificed to the gods at any moment.
The third line is a bit of a mess. We elected to run 24-year-old Sam Bennett with Dillon Dube at center and Buddy Robinson. We’ll be trading Buddy strictly because no grown man should be named Buddy. The fourth line is Milan Lucic, his nose, Derek Ryan, and homicide suspect Zac Rinaldo.
For step two, fixing parts of this roster realistically, we went with low-cost but high upside talent. We provided an offer to Mikael Granlund for a one-year contract at $2.475M and one to Dominik Kahun for $1.375M. Per the Evolving-Hockey’s contract projections, their model had Granlund at seven years (!) with a cap hit of $6.525M; and Kahun at two-years, $2.912M. Obviously we low-balled them and the game-version of both came in significantly lower. We’re optimistic in the coming days to see them accept and become Calgary Flames.
Finally, we made some trade block decisions. None of these are shocking and align with the business plan we presented to the Flames ownership.
The one surprise is the 2022 first-round pick, which we’re willing to utilize to create cap space or make a blockbuster trade (or two) to improve the organization. This way we can keep things spicy like any other hockey man would. Only instead of pulling a David Poile and acquiring miscreants who shouldn’t be gainfully employed for their off-ice actions, we’re acquiring actually decent talent!
Preseason Wrap-up, Roster, and Predictions
The Scorchstack-ran Calgary Flames finished the preseason with a remarkable 5-2 record with Lindholm leading the way offensively, notching 11 points (3G-8A). While impressive, and of course being a video game, we’re apprehensive that this type of performance can continue through the digital regular season.
The roster on paper seems probable for some level of competitiveness and whether or not EA properly takes aging curves into consideration remains suspect. Using the 2019-20 version of Sean Tierney’s WAR Lineup Creator, we can get somewhat of a gauge of the general performance this roster could do.
Some of this data is likely a bit out of date given how the season transpired, however it does give us an inkling of a best-case scenario for this team. You expect Markstrom can maintain what he did in real-life, but in-game; you hope Tanev provides a stronger impact than his results this past season indicated; and the real-world problems plaguing Gaudreau and Monahan don’t transpire in this season either.
We’re really excited about this and we have a lot planned for its run. Maybe we’ll get fired (if you want to bet on anything, bet on us being fired). Maybe we’ll bring about a new era of Calgary Flames hockey - one that Flames fans can take pride in. Maybe we’ll ruin hockey for you.
Next week we’ll explore the first two months of the regular season, crazy trade requests that come our way, gameplay of how our team performs, and we’ll sacrifice one random player to Scorch in hopes of good omens.
Special thanks directly to Shayna Goldman with the final visual.
Social Media Ratings For The New Guys
idk guys, I’m already out of ideas.
By Ramina (@RaminaShlah)
Hey everyone. You may be looking at the title and thinking, “Wow Ramz, are you already out of ideas now that you’re done your Ass-trology series?” And the answer is yes, obviously. Literally, I have no idea what to talk about. What do you want from me? Please help, that was not a rhetorical question.
Today, I thought it would be fun (not actually but if I didn’t get a post out this week I was going to get in trouble by Mr. Scorch) to go through the new guys’ social media accounts. And by the new guys, I mean Chris Tanev, Jacob Markstrom, and Joakim Nordstrom. Did the Flames get anybody else? I don’t know I have a bad memory and don’t care enough to look it up. And by social media accounts I mean just Instagram because none of them are active anywhere else. Let’s begin.
Chris Tanev
Very boring dude. What more are you expecting from a white Canadian hockey player? I will say, he has a total of seven posts on his Instagram and three of them include his adorable pug.
He gets points for that. He also made a post telling people to stay home during a pandemic while supporting homeless shelters across the country:
I don’t know much (or anything) about Hockey Helps the Homeless so I’m not exactly sure what they do or how much they do, but he’s participating in a cause that he believes is good, so I guess that’s fine. He also posted a black square for #blackouttuesday but also posted nothing else anywhere for Black Lives Matter. I mean, at least he did that. Is it more than doing just nothing? Not really, no.
I’ll give him a 6.5/10. He’s a little boring and not much is happening there, but there’s nothing inherently bad. If he posted more of his dog with similar captions to that first post I shared, it would bump him up to an 8.5.
Also, this has nothing to do with anything but when I was trying to find if he had a Twitter, I found a page called “Chris Tanev’s Ear.” Don’t know what that’s about and I don’t wish to find out, thanks.
Joakim Nordstrom
Much more active and lively on his IG. He also gets a lot of interactions and chirps from his teammates, which is always fun, so I hope he continues that here. He posts his girlfriend/fiance/wife a LOT which is more than I can say for all you other dudes who don’t post your gf (this is a sub-post at my boyfriend who I hope won’t be reading this), so that’s super cool, definitely appreciate dudes who do that.
He’ll also fit in with Albertan culture just fine:
Wait a second… what’s this?
I’m sorry… excuse me?
This is an anti-Italian page, sorry Tibs who’s editing this (ed note: Ramina has been suspended for poor teammate skills). This immediately knocks him down a couple of points.
Oliver Kylington interacts with him a lot and he’s also friends with some other Swedes on the team, so I’m glad they all have each other I guess. I will give his page a 7.5/10. It was a 9 before the pro-Italian propaganda.
Jacob Markstrom
The last guy of the day is Jacob Markstrom. He’s decently active on Insta and he’s also quite hot so that’s a bonus.
Don’t worry, we WILL be coming out with a season preview on the Flame Hotties. Like Tanev, he posted the stay the puck home stuff, which is cool I guess, and a black square for blackout Tuesday,but also did nothing else for BLM, so not sure how much that means.
Over the years, it seems like he has done quite a bit with World Autism Day, and it’s always a plus when a public figure supports organizations surrounding Autism awareness that isn’t Autism Speaks. And by a plus, I mean the bar is basically on the ground when it comes to public figures.
Anyways, he seems fine, kind of fun, has a good sense of fashion, and posts good things I guess. I don’t know, what else do you want me to say? It’s fine. I’ll give him 8/10.
That’s it for today. Come back next week when I intentionally give myself COVID to get out of writing something.
ADVERTISEMENT
The ScorchStack would not be possible without our gracious sponsors!
Brad Treliving Buyout Power Rankings!
What’s your favourite buyout? Email your response to customerservice@calgaryflames.com
By Konnie (@konnie49)
Brad Treliving has made a lot of buyouts. Like a LOT of buyouts. 6 to be exact. Which is 3rd most of ALL TIME for amount of buyouts by a single GM. With him being on the job since 2014, he has as many buyouts as he has years as the GM of the Calgary Flames. The Oxford Dictionary has a photo of Treliving as the definition of buyer’s remorse.
Its getting comical at this point at the rate its going, and with the team’s two big splashes in the offseason in Jacob Markstrom and Chris Tanev, we might see some, as predicted just last week. When it comes to a signature BT UFA Signing™, you can gamble with pretty good success that it will likely end with the Flames paying for that player to not play of the team.
I can hear you thinking (not really), “Wait, who are those 6 players that the Flames just had to buyout? How awful were their contracts? Oh god, how bad was their play?”. Well, my friend-who-is-reading-this-at-work, lets take a closer look at one man’s horrible shopping addiction. For each ranking I will be assigning a score from 1 to 5 retro reverse Blasty jerseys, with the 5 jerseys being the pinnacle of disaster.
I mean just look at these.
Buyout #1: Shane O’Brien
Let’s be honest, no one actually remembers Shane O’Brien actually playing for the team. He was acquired in a bad trade with the Colorado Avalanche before Treliving’s time, and he was bad the only season he played on a bad team in 2013-14. In one of his first acts as a GM, Treliving saw the disgusting cap hit O’Brien had, and said there is just no way he could ever have bad defensemen play for his hockey team, and decided to part ways. Boring and straight to the point.
Well that’s not a buyout that can be blamed on him though, right? He didn’t sign the original deal nor did he acquire it in the trade. Yes, but we are forgetting an interesting wrinkle in this story. See, in the 2014 offseason, the NHL was still allowing teams who hadn’t used up all their compliance buyouts from the previous offseason to use them now, and most teams who where making buyouts and had their 2 compliance slots did.
As such, when the O’Brien buyout was announced, it was reported as being a compliance buyout, meaning that none of O’Brien’s buyout would not count against the cap. Except, it wasn’t a compliance buyout. It was a regular buyout, meaning that O’Brien’s cap hit of $733,333 was on the books for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons.
Somehow, Brad Treliving managed to fuck up a buyout for a deal he didn’t even acquire. With the team spending to the cap in those two seasons, it sure would have been nice to have had at least $700,000 of extra breathing room. A solid 3 out of 5 reverse Blasties.
Buyout #2: Mason Raymond
Yeah, this one you can’t really say too much, as it was looked at as a pretty decent signing at first. Raymond was coming off a 45 point season with Toronto in 2013-14 and got a solid 3 year deal with a $3.15 mil cap hit.
Then he proceeded to suck as did almost everyone else on the team, but since this was the 2014-15 season, it somehow ended with the team getting a playoff spot. Unfortunately, he got the raw end of the deal and was the only player on the team that did not get bit with whatever bullshit magic as the rest of the team, and put up a meh 23 points and ugly underlying numbers.
The next year saw the rest of the team crash back down to earth and Raymond continuing to be lacklustre, until got sent down to the AHL. Not wanting to pay a guy to be a $3.15 mil AHLer, Raymond got the boot for his final year.
There is definitely some buyer’s remorse with this deal from Brad, but even I can’t really fault him with this decision. It was a solid bet that didn’t pan out. Only 1 out of 5 anti-Blasties.
Buyout #3: Lance Bouma
Remember when I said how the 2014-15 Flames got bit with bullshit magic? Yeah, ol’ best buddie of Johnny and Mony Lance Bouma got bit the hardest, and had an absolute “tear” of 34 points, even with a massive 16% shooting percentage and a huge bump by playing next to Mikael Backlund. Brad saw those numbers and absolutely fell in love. It was everything he could ever want in a bottom six player with middle six upside. As such, with Bouma heading into the offseason as an RFA (yes, the team had all the leverage and control over this negotiation), they made sure their potential core depth piece was locked up to a 3 year deal with an annual cap hit of 2.2 mil.
Except Bouma was never that, and in fact was absolutely terrible. He was a sub replacement level player who was paid quadruple to what he was worth. The next two years, he scored a total of 5 goals. 5.
With a deal being this bad and absolutely garbage the minute it was signed, it doesn’t take a master’s degree in economics to see that it was a waste of money that the team needed to get out of. A buyout was absolutely the right move, but the shear lack of foresight still baffles me. It’s as if this deal was done before anyone actually decided to think. 4 out of 5 tarred and feathered Blasties.
Buyout #4: Ryan Murphy
Remember this one? Don’t blame ya. This guy was traded along side Eddie Lack in exchange for Keegan Kanzig. The only reason this deal was ever relevant is for Lack being so bashfully Swedish.
At the time, Murphy seemed to be an okay option as a depth defensemen, fitting in that 6/7 range after Carolina seemingly gave up on his development. At the time, the team had little to no quality depth defensemen that had any promise, so Murphy would have been able to at least climb over that incredibly low bar.
That’s what I thought for a whole 24 hours before the Flames announced that they were gonna buyout his contract. Yes, the team just couldn’t manage a 25 year old defenseman making $787k and absolutely had to buy him out without him even making it to training camp.
This was just such a strange buyout, and was frankly a waste of money on a guy that they did not even want to associate with for more than a day. Not saying he is a player worth ever thinking about ever again once you are done reading this article, but still, just very weird. 2 out 5 beaten, broken and damned Blasties.
Buyout #5: Troy Brouwer
Ahh yes, the big one. The ultimate Brad Treliving blunder that started the descent into managerial ineptitude.
Troy Brouwer was your traditional case of a GM overpaying for a gritty player who scored way above his ability in the playoffs and was thus branded as a playoff performer, the “right kind of player you need to win” by the 500 hockey Men themselves. He had the playoff success from a conference final run with the Blues, leading to the belief that he was an impact scorer, with the grit and edge in his game and just all of the intangibles.
Once Brouwer actually got to the Flames, he quickly became the hockey equivalent to the Holy Roman Empire, in the fact that he couldn’t score, was never gritty or had any sort of an edge when it really mattered, and was by all accounts, a shitty teammate. 0 of out 3 of the things he was advertised as.
After only spending 2 years in a comically bad 4 year deal with an annual cap hit of $4.5 mil, Brad again had himself a deal he thought was amazing when in reality was very bad and got remorseful about it not even halfway int. 5 out of 5 oil-sands-looking Blasties.
Buyout #6: Mike Stone
Listen, I know it was getting humourous that the Flames had tried to acquire every single known Michael to play in the NHL, but this was one Mike that you could afford to lose.
Shortly after the team mistakenly let Brian Burke go, bringing in Don Maloney from the Arizona Coyotes to replace him, the Flames thought that acquiring a 6th defenseman from one of the worst teams in the league at the 2017 trade deadline was a smart idea.
Stone basically performed pretty much the same as he did back in Arizona for the rest of the season, with a seemingly 0% chance that he would actually get re-signed as surely Brad Treliving had to have seen the error in his ways.
Instead, Treliving signed Mike Stone to a 3 year, $3.5 mil deal. Of course.
It feels like these moves are starting to sound like the exact same thing repeated over and over again. Can you predict what happened next?
Well, it turns out that when you sign a below replacement level player to multi year deals worth millions of dollars, the player doesn’t just magically become decent out of thin air.
Stone sucked hard the next two seasons. He also blocked the Flames from going out and actually acquiring any good defensemen that could have easily provided double the value at half the cost, and the cap hit was an unnecessary nuisance that they were forced to work around. Another bad contract signed, another forced buyout 2 years.
But this one was special. Oh yes, because not only did Treliving happen to have buyers remorse, he seemingly also had buyouters remorse as well! A little over a month later, Stone was re-signed to yet another deal. They established that they just could not pay to have this player on his current deal, so the team would rather see him go, only to bring him back. The Flames then have to have his salary stay on the cap for longer than the length of Stone’s original deal. WHAT WAS EVEN THE POINT OF THE BUYOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Easily a 5 out 5 Brad Treliving endorsed Blasties.
God, Treliving sucks at signing UFA deals. Its easy to see the pattern emerging of him falling in love with a player of a pre-determined mindset, being willing to invest 4 years into said player, even though the prevailing consensus is that said player is likely going to suck, then realizing that he made a mistake less than halfway through the deal, to the point where a buyout is the only way out, forcing him to deal with the cap penalties that follow. Its a seemingly never ending cycle that as Flames fan we hope to never fall into now that all these deals are gone by the way side. Wait, what do you mean Chris Tanev’s deal is 4 years? HE GOT HOW MUCH?
I Tried To Spend $700,000 At Nordstrom’s To See If I Could Match The Value The Flames Are Getting In Joakim Nordstrom
and all I got were several of these lousy shirts
By floob(@itlooksreal)
Earlier this week, your Calgary Flames announced they had come to terms on a one year deal with free agent forward Joakim Nordstrom.
When I learned of the news, my immediate thought was “I don’t know what that is”.
Then someone told me it was a human boy, who plays professional hockey, and was last a member of the Boston Bruins. I said “okay”.
But then I drank exactly two beers and decided to look into it in further detail, just to see what the Flames are getting here, and if maybe Brad Treliving had pulled a low key good move in free agency.
Turns out, like usual, he had not.
Nordstrom, a 28 year old center, was signed to a one year contract at a league minimum $700,000, and despite this, still looks to be a terrible free agent signing. Nordstrom has zero offense to speak of, and is known as a PK specialist who appears to be bad at the penalty kill, and knows enough Swedish people to be friends with a lot of players currently on the team. Also he blocks shots. It’s safe to say he would already be a fan favourite amongst the faithful at the Saddledome, who have a tendency to love the most godawful players, so if the 2021 season were indeed to be played in a bubble somewhere (or just in empty arenas regardless), there appears to be little or no value to be had. Even when you consider they are going to pay him the bare minimum a human on an NHL contract can command.
Also his name is Nordstrom, like the store. Look, I already gave everything away in the title of this piece, you know what happens next. Because we at the Scorchstack are champions at taking the shortest possible walk to get to the easiest destination, this one was a slam dunk. You already know I went to the Nordstrom’s website to see if I could spend $700,000 dollars on their wares and walk away with more value to the Calgary Flames than what they will get out of Nordstrom the player.
Here’s how my very detailed and specific plan of action breaks down:
My goal was to collect items for players and I guess maybe coaches on the team, apparel that they can use day to day to help them through the rigours of an unforgiving NHL season. Not knowing when this upcoming campaign will even begin, nor the logistics of how they are going to attempt it, this bakes in some more potential challenges, and I was wondering if a little bit of retail therapy would help with that as well.
Nordstrom’s, being your classic department store, has a little bit of everything, from activewear, to suits and blazers, to home decor, and yes, even face masks. I was looking forward to buying everyone face masks. Considering I had $700,000 to spend, and something like 30-50 people to shop for, I felt confident, ready to take on the world, but also annoyed when I realized how long this was going to take me.
I started with activewear. I figured the team - no matter where they might call home in 2021 - were going to want to hit the gym, or find a way to cool down after practices and games, and some comfortable, breathable fabrics seemed like the appropriate place to kick this all off.
After a bit of browsing, I settled on some Vuori Sunday Performance Fleece Sweatpants.
Now, I’m a frugal guy, and charging $80 for sweatpants feels like something someone should end up standing before a judge for doing, but the life of a pro athlete is one of luxury, and I also think it’s going to be harder to spend $700,000 than I thought, so I’m willing to pay for things at a premium here. These look comfortable enough, they’re stretchy, and wick moisture, so I think this checks off a lot of boxes. I decided to throw in about 30 pairs with various colours and sizes (small for Johnny Gaudreau, extra large for Milan Lucic, and so forth)
But some guys, guys like me, no matter what the climate always run hot, and maybe sweatpants aren’t always going to be appropriate. So next I looked at some Zella Pyrite Knit Shorts, which I assumed was going to be lab equipment for high school chemistry class, but they were not.
Again, $49 for half a pair of sweatpants seems crazy to me, but hey, I guess I’m just a salt of the earth, blue collar man with a heart of gold and chiselled jaw. I followed my same protocols from before and threw about 9 pairs at different sizes and colours (black AND grey!) into the bag. I wanted to add more, but that’s all I could get from the available inventory. I’m going to need some more shorts, but we’ll get back to that. We were on our way.
I thought, hey, that’s pretty good for bottoms, what about tops? Arms are like the legs of your chest. That’s when I decided to peruse some hoodies.
The Nike Dri-FIT Training hoodie, retailing at $45 a pop, jumped out at me right away. These look pretty slick, no? Imagine Dillon Dube rocking one of these bad boys? Man. I can’t stop imagining it. This was an easy decision, let’s throw 30 of these into the shopping bag, also I need to remind myself to see what other kinda things Dillon Dube likes, maybe for like Christmas presents or just because.
At this point I fell back onto the same consideration I did after adding the sweatpants. For some of these guys, a hoodie is going to be just too hot. I don’t want them Bill Belichicking these things, I’m paying good money here! (Presumably the money for all of this is coming from me???) At times like this, well, you just can’t go wrong with a t-shirt.
I’m sure it’s considered a major faux pas in some circles to have Adidas shirts and Nike hoodies being displayed at the same time, but that’s a nice looking shirt and a fine one to be wearing during gym time. Another 30, get them in there!
I couldn’t get past this “only 9 pairs of shorts” thing. I had to rectify that situation before moving on to my next area of focus, suits. I did find a nice alternative in the Vuori Kore Shorts, and at $68/per, would help me reach my $700,000 goal that much faster. I threw a bunch of those in the bag, and was promptly told I could not have more than 99 items in it.
I decided that was as far as I wanted to go.
With a full, if not seemingly incomplete shopping bag, allowing for estimated tax (you better believe I qualified for free shipping), my total came to $5737.41, or $694,262.59 less than what the team is spending on Joakim Nordstrom.
From there, I did a lot of analysis, reviewed trends in fashion, did some more side shopping on other sites for Dillon Dube, and came up with a very precise formula to determine if the almost $6000 the team could spend at Nordstrom’s is better value than the league minimum player they instead went with. I won’t get too much into the details of that method because it’s very complicated and you probably wouldn’t be able to figure it out anyway, and the answer is yes, the sweatpants are a far greater value.
The only conclusion that can possibly be gleaned from all of this is that Joakim Nordstrom needs to be traded immediately for just all the cotton-poly blends we can possibly find.
With The Calgary Flames Loaning Out Artyom Zagidulin, Should We Be Worried As To What The Team Sees In His Potential For The Future? Should We Be Worried If He Never Returns From Russia?
By Konnie (@konnie49)
Нет.
Up Next Week
Theo Fleury released a country album once. Maybe we’ll listen to it. Maybe we’ll all spontaneously combust instead.
They keep threatening to bring back Ol’ Blasty in the worst ways possible, so we’re going to hijack a tank and make sure our demands are met
The guarantee of a movie review this weekend depends entirely on whether or not anyone is reading this sentence.