The Calgary Flames’ rebuild has officially arrived

With the trades of Rasmus Andersson, MacKenzie Weegar and Nazem Kadri, Craig Conroy decisively has ended the debate about whether the Flames are engaged in a true rebuild or not.

Since Brad Treliving left Calgary, “tanking” has been regarded as taboo. Front office management has studiously avoided labeling their post-Gaudreau efforts as a rebuild.

Terms like retool, reload, and even “rebiggle” were used, cautiously, to describe the brain trusts’ modus operandi.

This was due, no doubt, to a residual hope that the club could build while remaining competitive in the short term. Even entering this season, Calgary’s stated internal mission was to be “one point better,” a nod to narrowly missing out on the post-season.

While that ambition was quashed by a difficult first quarter, the GM could have chosen to trade pending UFA Andersson and then continued along the ambivalent path: Both building and battling.

Instead, Conroy finally picked a lane this trade deadline by moving key veterans with term, a first since he took the big chair. The team is going to be bad for a while. And the franchise will be better for it.

The appeal of the previous, bifurcated path is obvious. First, you don’t give your players and your fans the impression that you want to lose. Managing both the dressing room and season-ticket sales for an avowed tank is probably somewhat awkward.

It also gives you optionality as a management group. Dustin Wolf putting up a brick wall in his rookie season gave the front office some hope that they could thread the needle by selling and drafting judiciously while still rolling out a roster that could remain a going concern.

How did the Flames get here?

On the other hand, there are obvious reasons that a full-on, true-blue rebuild was inevitable. The first being the state of the roster left over by Treliving.

The combination of an aging, expensive core with zero superstars and a pipeline lacking a blue-chip prospect meant the retool plan would be especially challenging to execute.

The previous build’s foundation had cracked, the load-bearing pillars toppled over. The entire project had to be razed to the ground. There was no way to refurbish what was left. A coat of paint wasn’t going to do it.

Unfortunately, the only way to pour a new foundation is to dig a hole. That’s where the Flames are now. The league is engineered for parity and it rewards teams at the bottom of the standings with the best chance of drafting superstars.

Good scouting and development can help, but hoping to build an enduring contender from the middle of the first round is fighting the tide. It’s no coincidence that the Flames have never picked in the top-3 and have also never advanced past the second round in more than two decades.

For now, that means the team is going to spend some time in the basement. One thing we’ve learned this year is that quality goaltending and a dedication to defensively adept hockey aren’t a sufficient buttress against a severe deficiency in peak-age talent.

To the credit of everyone involved — from Ryan Huska to the veterans and kids who remain — the team has not imploded in embarrassing fashion like the Vancouver Canucks or the New York Rangers. A day after the trade deadline, lacking Andersson, Weegar and Kadri, the Flames beat the Eastern Conference-leading Carolina Hurricanes (without the caveat of Wolf having to stand on his head).

Calgary is going to finish at the bottom of the standings this year, but they rarely are an easy out. By all accounts, the dressing room is tight and management is respected.

So the “ethical tank” continues apace. Off the ice, the organization is positioned to collect a wealth of prospects over the next three summers. On the ice, we can’t expect much in the way of success.

With the win-loss record not mattering much (in the short term), the real test will be their ability to maintain a commitment to honest efforts, good fundamentals and lack of melodrama.

It’s not going to be easy or pretty, but the vision for the future is clear. Now, there’s no doubt amongst everyone involved that the only way out is through.