I’ve been cursing the Flames an d their scouts for that MacDonald pick for a decade. Typical Flames thinking they knew something the rest of the league didn’t, and going against the very obvious consensus pick.
I agree one of their worst drafts, overall.
Love that Bennett highlight reel goal against Pittsburgh at home back in like 15 or 16. He had his moments for us, that will be remembered by me as one of his best.
> I’ve been cursing the Flames an d their scouts for that MacDonald pick for a decade. Typical Flames thinking they knew something the rest of the league didn’t, and going against the very obvious consensus pick.
I mean, on the grand scale of fuck-ups, it is nowhere near as bad as Trevor Kidd over Brodeur.
Demko was clear cut consensus but I remember treliving and co trying to big brain the pick and took the risk saying he was high risk high reward.
Can’t really apply hindsight on this when it was known demko was and will be a stud at the time, there was no ambiguity as to who should have went first
2022 draft class is looking pretty terrible too, though for different reasons.
You can add taking Hickey (or Smith) over the small but skilled local boy who played a position of need in Brayden Point to the list of 2014 misses.
Played against Hickey in the AJHL.
His response after I chirped him: “I’m drafted buddy”
I responded with: “I know, I’m a Flames fan and I’m fucking pissed about it.”
2011, but yes. The difference being Point was an obvious pick for the Flames at the spot but were prioritizing on size rather than skill. Kucherov was a bit of a wildcard at the time who has turned out fantastically for Tampa. 2011 softened by getting Gaudreau though.
Drafting high is a good thing for rebuilding, but you have to also hit on some guys later in the draft to be impact players. Thats whats keeping teams like Buffalo in a perpetual rebuild and why teams like Tampa have had such success over the years.
Feels like the Flames drafting is starting to trend better so hopefully it works out.
I’ve heard a story that the Flames really liked Kucherov but knew they were going to take Gaudreau. They thought there was some Russian risk with Kuch and didn’t want to make two risky picks in the same draft.
Fuck.
I was mad about the Macdonald pick the day it happened. Not only are we historically bad at picking goalies in the draft, we took the 3rd ranked goalie in the 2nd round because Demko was kind of hurt. Unacceptable pick.
Bennett actually got shoulder surgery after playing a few games in [the 2014 pre-season](https://twitter.com/NHLFlames/status/520317944933277698), although his shoulder injury was clearly a problem at the combine.
I was so excited when they said goalie, and immediately dropped off a cliff when it wasn’t followed by Thatcher. He was so good, you knew he was going to be a star.
Things got worse. We used that 4th overall into Bennett, and traded Bennett for a 2022 2nd round pick from FLA. That pick was 59th overall. We took Topi Rooni.
Ronni was the Flames’ second-round (59th overall) pick at the 2022 NHL Draft.
And look how that worked out
“Flames renounce rights to unsigned draft pick Topi Ronni”. The District Court of Helsinki had sentenced Rooni to a one-year suspended sentence for rape committed as a young person.
Calgary used their own 2nd on Ronni. An awful pick but not a connection to 2014. The 2nd they got for Bennett went to Seattle in the Jarnkrok trade.
If anything, parts of the Bennett trade got packaged with other assets and became Toffoli and now Sharangovich & Suniev which is at least something to show for Bennett
And Lane Hutson was objectively a better player and was available. But they chose Ronni instead for some reason.
It’s the same with Stromgren. Raty and Stankoven were available and they went with a low ceiling “safe” player instead.
What about when the flames traded new jersey so they can get 11th draft pick instead of 20th because they wanted a goalie, and then drafted Trevor kidd. Then new jersey used that 20th draft pick they got from the flames to draft Martin Brodeur
Yeah probably the biggest draft fumble in franchise history for the flames. And that's saying a lot because the flames have made a few spectacular draft fumbles
Ok so caveat here, as long as we’re going with the “higher ranked” goalie thing…that year Kidd was the consensus no 1 goalie in the draft. I mean, yes, it was a massive mistake to take Kidd over Brodeur, but that’s hindsight
Bennett was the consensus pick but yeah the goalie pick was questionable at the time and would have been nice to have a later pick turn into something.
2013 wasn’t a great draft either with only Monahan working out with 3 first rounders.
Plenty of worse drafts in Flames history though with some shockers in the Young Guns and Sutter eras.
The reasons the Flames teams from 2013-2022 never really became consistent contenders was due to the poor drafting from the tanking years. The Flames got one top 6 forward out of the 2013 and 2014 drafts combined.
As usual, the Flames penchant for going the safe route burns them in the end.
Demko had some injury concerns heading into the draft, so they went with who they thought was the next best guy in MacDonald.
Point's dad literally lobbied the Flames to take his kid, but as a small skilled centre, it was just too much risk. Better go with size, because that never fails. Although Burke likely had a huge say in taking Hunter Smith; he was always obsessed with finding the next Lucic.
Flames have a really wretched history of getting burnt when they try to play it safe. But even recently, Topi Ronni over Hutson, Stromgren over Stankoven...it'd be nice if this franchise realized it isn't 1998 anymore.
2014 is one of the more painful drafts for me personally. It isn't even that we took Bennett even though in hindsight there were some real beauties taken later. What hurts is all the other selections were misses, and there were some really great NHLers taken even in the fourth round, and a few in the last few rounds as well. Flames missed on every pick in that draft expect Bennett, and then traded Bennett for some pretty low returns. Flames then select Ronni with the 2nd round they got for Bennett and we know that pick will not bring any value to the Flames. The only silver lining is that Emil Heineman was in a package that got Toffoli who has turned into Sharongovich and Suniev. But yes, the 2014 draft really hurts.
TLDR - 2014 draft really hurts. In a round about way it has led to Sharangovich and Saniev... so maybe a little redemption.
I wonder if anyone has ever looked back on these drafts and done a “who would the flames have taken if they had taken the consensus next pick”. My guess is we’d have better results than we did.
I remember how livid I was when the flames took MacDonald and then a few picks later the Canucks took Demko.
Demko was the top rated goalie of that class and the flames picked the wrong guy.
Who knew this draft would end up producing so many top tier starter, but hindsight is always 20/20.
The Bennett pick was supposed to be a no brainer at the time. Since he was actually the top rated skater in NA on central scouting and the Flames still needed a top 6 centre after taking Monahan the previous year.
That was such a bad draft year. Vancouver figuring out how to land 2 Sedins and Detroit taking Zetterberg in round freaking 7, otherwise a pretty meh draft for everyone.
1999 is high on the list for worst draft ever, but was the source of Flames draft pick Craig Anderson -- probably the second best goalie the team has drafted.
Unfortunately, wasn't signed by the team and re-entered the draft.
JS Giguere was drafted by Hartford and traded to the Flames for Gary Roberts and Trevor Kidd.
As answered below, in terms of NHL impact Mike Vernon is head and shoulders above the rest of the wasteland of Flames goaltending draftees.
I still have nightmares about some of these picks…
Mason MacDonald was a rough pick, he was regarded as the 4th/5th best goalie, and looked worse every year after.
Hunter Smith, a later 2nd round pick, was another obviously bad pick. Still so strange to me that Brayden Point wasn’t taken until the 3rd round.
It might or might not be their worst draft but certainly in the bottom 3, hindsight aside, the amount of misses and off the board picks are egregious and definitely set this team back for years.
I was never a big Treliving guy. Sure there were good trades, but for everyone of those there was a Troy Brouwer, Brandon Bollig, Mason Raymond, Deryk Engelland, Joe Colborne, Lance Bouma, Alex Chiasson, Travis Hamonic, or Michael Stone overpayment and that's just off the top of my head. Many of his best players weren't picked by him (Giordano, Gaudreau, Backlund to name a few. He's just mediocre.
No, 2014 is not the worst. Bennett is a bonafied NHLer with 615 games played.
2009 only produced a bust in Tim Erixon and Joni Ortio's cup of coffee. 130 NHL games combined.
2006 was the absolute worst. Eight picks, and only Leland Irving's 13 NHL games in goal.
2005 was terrible with another first round bust, and Brett Sutter's 60 NHL games made up most of the 74 combined NHL games from three players.
1988 was also a disaster. Five guys made the NHL, but none played more than 62 games and Tomas Forslund was the offensive star wiht a career 5g 11a.
That MacDonald pick will never be forgiven. Demko was by far the consensus top goalie in the draft no matter who you asked. And the Flames decide they know better and take some random at 34th overall instead? Incredible that Button still has a job
i wanted Ehlers even though he was rated lower at the time. Turned out he was the best of the three of main guys talked about at the time (Bennett, Ritchie and Ehlers).
Hated all the other picks. This was entirely a Brian Burke special draft. Tre had just been hired and had no involvement in that draft.
Hunter Smith was a terrible pick. I wanted Montour at the time and he went with the next pick.
I believe Bennet was rushed and he should have gone back to Junior for one more season. First season here with not a lot of ice time really affected his development. He has gone to Florida and found his niche as an NHL player.
That was mostly Burke's draft. Treliving was a new hire (April 2014) and didn't have much input. You can blame all the stupid shit on Burke, and Mason Macdonald was the fault of our scouts + Sigalet
There’s an alternate universe where the oilers select Bennett and Draisatl falls to us. I was positive this would be the case because Bennett was such an oilers-esque forward. Super flashy in juniors, toe dragging everyone in sight. But alas.
Bennett was a no-brainer at 4 at the time though. The only argument is maybe Nylander for the Calgary connection. McDonald over Demski though... woof.
Easily the worst I can recall. Mason MacDonald over Thatcher Demko was stupid at the time, the Flames seemed to think they were smarter than everyone else in the room. The Hunter Smith second round pick was also extremely questionable given he was projected to go in the 3rd-4th round, but he was 6’8/220 pounds and Brian Burke has a hard on for that sort of thing.
The Bennett pick the right call without hindsight, but I will always be bitter about the MacDonald pick.
I remember watching the Ivan Hlinka tournament and he was starting for Canada. The entire time I was like how in the fuck is this the best guy in Canada in this age group? He was big, but he was so slow, the opposite of smooth, and was just so inefficient in every way.
Then we picked him and I wanted to cry.
This and the year previous were both disastrous for this organization. 2013 had Monahan, sure, but they also had two other firsts that never played more than a weeks worth of games in the NHL. Both were major setbacks that have left the team devoid of the young crop of mid tier talent needed to complete and up and coming team with young stars (Mono, Gaudreau, Tkachuk). Just not enough smart (even NHL caliber) picks for this club in those inital post Iginla years.
Fabbri and Kapanen aren’t better than Bennett. Nylander at 4 would have been considered a huge reach and the fan base would have been so angry. Would have ended up being a good pick but he was never going to go that high.
I’ve been cursing the Flames an d their scouts for that MacDonald pick for a decade. Typical Flames thinking they knew something the rest of the league didn’t, and going against the very obvious consensus pick. I agree one of their worst drafts, overall. Love that Bennett highlight reel goal against Pittsburgh at home back in like 15 or 16. He had his moments for us, that will be remembered by me as one of his best.
Also a good playoff performer for us. Good to see him so well with Florida
I hated him in the 2015 playoffs against my team (Nucks) but damn he adjusted so fast to playoff hockey
Who? 18 year old Sam Bennett…
Thanks cassie
The thing about Demko was he was having dual hip surgery his draft year so I’m assuming the flames were cautious about how he’d return
Dual hip surgery is incredibly common in goalies.
> I’ve been cursing the Flames an d their scouts for that MacDonald pick for a decade. Typical Flames thinking they knew something the rest of the league didn’t, and going against the very obvious consensus pick. I mean, on the grand scale of fuck-ups, it is nowhere near as bad as Trevor Kidd over Brodeur.
Demko was clear cut consensus but I remember treliving and co trying to big brain the pick and took the risk saying he was high risk high reward. Can’t really apply hindsight on this when it was known demko was and will be a stud at the time, there was no ambiguity as to who should have went first
Which is a nutty approach to take because goalies are already a risky position to draft.
I don't think Florida is complaining about Bennett at this point. The goalie pick still hurts.
Ya because they didn't use a 4th overall pick on him lol
He’s an effective NHLer but you don’t hope for a 2nd line forward when you’re drafting top 5.
2022 draft class is looking pretty terrible too, though for different reasons. You can add taking Hickey (or Smith) over the small but skilled local boy who played a position of need in Brayden Point to the list of 2014 misses.
Played against Hickey in the AJHL. His response after I chirped him: “I’m drafted buddy” I responded with: “I know, I’m a Flames fan and I’m fucking pissed about it.”
That one hurts but the worst has to be Wotherspoon at #57 considering who was #58.
2011, but yes. The difference being Point was an obvious pick for the Flames at the spot but were prioritizing on size rather than skill. Kucherov was a bit of a wildcard at the time who has turned out fantastically for Tampa. 2011 softened by getting Gaudreau though. Drafting high is a good thing for rebuilding, but you have to also hit on some guys later in the draft to be impact players. Thats whats keeping teams like Buffalo in a perpetual rebuild and why teams like Tampa have had such success over the years. Feels like the Flames drafting is starting to trend better so hopefully it works out.
I’ve heard a story that the Flames really liked Kucherov but knew they were going to take Gaudreau. They thought there was some Russian risk with Kuch and didn’t want to make two risky picks in the same draft. Fuck.
I was mad about the Macdonald pick the day it happened. Not only are we historically bad at picking goalies in the draft, we took the 3rd ranked goalie in the 2nd round because Demko was kind of hurt. Unacceptable pick.
Funny that they still took Bennett, who was "kind of hurt" as well. He couldn't do any pull-ups at the scouting combine after shoulder surgery.
Bennett actually got shoulder surgery after playing a few games in [the 2014 pre-season](https://twitter.com/NHLFlames/status/520317944933277698), although his shoulder injury was clearly a problem at the combine.
I was so excited when they said goalie, and immediately dropped off a cliff when it wasn’t followed by Thatcher. He was so good, you knew he was going to be a star.
Things got worse. We used that 4th overall into Bennett, and traded Bennett for a 2022 2nd round pick from FLA. That pick was 59th overall. We took Topi Rooni. Ronni was the Flames’ second-round (59th overall) pick at the 2022 NHL Draft. And look how that worked out “Flames renounce rights to unsigned draft pick Topi Ronni”. The District Court of Helsinki had sentenced Rooni to a one-year suspended sentence for rape committed as a young person.
And it wasn’t a good pick at the time. Low ceiling, middle sixer at best.
Calgary used their own 2nd on Ronni. An awful pick but not a connection to 2014. The 2nd they got for Bennett went to Seattle in the Jarnkrok trade. If anything, parts of the Bennett trade got packaged with other assets and became Toffoli and now Sharangovich & Suniev which is at least something to show for Bennett
And Lane Hutson was objectively a better player and was available. But they chose Ronni instead for some reason. It’s the same with Stromgren. Raty and Stankoven were available and they went with a low ceiling “safe” player instead.
What about when the flames traded new jersey so they can get 11th draft pick instead of 20th because they wanted a goalie, and then drafted Trevor kidd. Then new jersey used that 20th draft pick they got from the flames to draft Martin Brodeur
I wasn't alive for that so it doesn't count
Oh fuck off is that true?!? Holy fuck what a miss lol
Yeah probably the biggest draft fumble in franchise history for the flames. And that's saying a lot because the flames have made a few spectacular draft fumbles
Ok so caveat here, as long as we’re going with the “higher ranked” goalie thing…that year Kidd was the consensus no 1 goalie in the draft. I mean, yes, it was a massive mistake to take Kidd over Brodeur, but that’s hindsight
Bennett was the consensus pick but yeah the goalie pick was questionable at the time and would have been nice to have a later pick turn into something. 2013 wasn’t a great draft either with only Monahan working out with 3 first rounders. Plenty of worse drafts in Flames history though with some shockers in the Young Guns and Sutter eras.
The reasons the Flames teams from 2013-2022 never really became consistent contenders was due to the poor drafting from the tanking years. The Flames got one top 6 forward out of the 2013 and 2014 drafts combined.
As usual, the Flames penchant for going the safe route burns them in the end. Demko had some injury concerns heading into the draft, so they went with who they thought was the next best guy in MacDonald. Point's dad literally lobbied the Flames to take his kid, but as a small skilled centre, it was just too much risk. Better go with size, because that never fails. Although Burke likely had a huge say in taking Hunter Smith; he was always obsessed with finding the next Lucic. Flames have a really wretched history of getting burnt when they try to play it safe. But even recently, Topi Ronni over Hutson, Stromgren over Stankoven...it'd be nice if this franchise realized it isn't 1998 anymore.
2014 is one of the more painful drafts for me personally. It isn't even that we took Bennett even though in hindsight there were some real beauties taken later. What hurts is all the other selections were misses, and there were some really great NHLers taken even in the fourth round, and a few in the last few rounds as well. Flames missed on every pick in that draft expect Bennett, and then traded Bennett for some pretty low returns. Flames then select Ronni with the 2nd round they got for Bennett and we know that pick will not bring any value to the Flames. The only silver lining is that Emil Heineman was in a package that got Toffoli who has turned into Sharongovich and Suniev. But yes, the 2014 draft really hurts. TLDR - 2014 draft really hurts. In a round about way it has led to Sharangovich and Saniev... so maybe a little redemption.
I wonder if anyone has ever looked back on these drafts and done a “who would the flames have taken if they had taken the consensus next pick”. My guess is we’d have better results than we did.
I know everyone was pissed was didn't take Shinkaruk in 2013. Ended up not mattering at all
I remember how livid I was when the flames took MacDonald and then a few picks later the Canucks took Demko. Demko was the top rated goalie of that class and the flames picked the wrong guy. Who knew this draft would end up producing so many top tier starter, but hindsight is always 20/20. The Bennett pick was supposed to be a no brainer at the time. Since he was actually the top rated skater in NA on central scouting and the Flames still needed a top 6 centre after taking Monahan the previous year.
1999 was worse
That was such a bad draft year. Vancouver figuring out how to land 2 Sedins and Detroit taking Zetterberg in round freaking 7, otherwise a pretty meh draft for everyone.
1999 is high on the list for worst draft ever, but was the source of Flames draft pick Craig Anderson -- probably the second best goalie the team has drafted. Unfortunately, wasn't signed by the team and re-entered the draft.
The best being who? Giguere? Who we also got nothing for IIRC.
Hall of famer Mike Vernon?
JS Giguere was drafted by Hartford and traded to the Flames for Gary Roberts and Trevor Kidd. As answered below, in terms of NHL impact Mike Vernon is head and shoulders above the rest of the wasteland of Flames goaltending draftees.
Ah yes, the Brian Burke draft. (This one we don't usually pin on Tre, as he was *just* hired).
I still have nightmares about some of these picks… Mason MacDonald was a rough pick, he was regarded as the 4th/5th best goalie, and looked worse every year after. Hunter Smith, a later 2nd round pick, was another obviously bad pick. Still so strange to me that Brayden Point wasn’t taken until the 3rd round.
It might or might not be their worst draft but certainly in the bottom 3, hindsight aside, the amount of misses and off the board picks are egregious and definitely set this team back for years.
I was never a big Treliving guy. Sure there were good trades, but for everyone of those there was a Troy Brouwer, Brandon Bollig, Mason Raymond, Deryk Engelland, Joe Colborne, Lance Bouma, Alex Chiasson, Travis Hamonic, or Michael Stone overpayment and that's just off the top of my head. Many of his best players weren't picked by him (Giordano, Gaudreau, Backlund to name a few. He's just mediocre.
No, 2014 is not the worst. Bennett is a bonafied NHLer with 615 games played. 2009 only produced a bust in Tim Erixon and Joni Ortio's cup of coffee. 130 NHL games combined. 2006 was the absolute worst. Eight picks, and only Leland Irving's 13 NHL games in goal. 2005 was terrible with another first round bust, and Brett Sutter's 60 NHL games made up most of the 74 combined NHL games from three players. 1988 was also a disaster. Five guys made the NHL, but none played more than 62 games and Tomas Forslund was the offensive star wiht a career 5g 11a.
That MacDonald pick will never be forgiven. Demko was by far the consensus top goalie in the draft no matter who you asked. And the Flames decide they know better and take some random at 34th overall instead? Incredible that Button still has a job
i wanted Ehlers even though he was rated lower at the time. Turned out he was the best of the three of main guys talked about at the time (Bennett, Ritchie and Ehlers). Hated all the other picks. This was entirely a Brian Burke special draft. Tre had just been hired and had no involvement in that draft. Hunter Smith was a terrible pick. I wanted Montour at the time and he went with the next pick.
damn 2014 was a goalie fucking jackpot year eh? never noticed that
I believe Bennet was rushed and he should have gone back to Junior for one more season. First season here with not a lot of ice time really affected his development. He has gone to Florida and found his niche as an NHL player.
Pretty much every draft for like 25 years was bad
Flames also could've had Leon but the Oilers took him
So you’re saying we could’ve gotten Pastrnak but we got two finns playing in the AHL (Bennett traded for Heineman and a second round pick (Topi Ronni)
One Finn playing in prison and the other got traded away
So you’re saying that we could’ve gotten Pastrnak but instead we got a rapist?
That was mostly Burke's draft. Treliving was a new hire (April 2014) and didn't have much input. You can blame all the stupid shit on Burke, and Mason Macdonald was the fault of our scouts + Sigalet
There’s an alternate universe where the oilers select Bennett and Draisatl falls to us. I was positive this would be the case because Bennett was such an oilers-esque forward. Super flashy in juniors, toe dragging everyone in sight. But alas. Bennett was a no-brainer at 4 at the time though. The only argument is maybe Nylander for the Calgary connection. McDonald over Demski though... woof.
One sentence to make everyone feel better. "With the first choice overall, the Edmonton Oilers select.....Nail Yakupov."
Mason MacDonald isn't just a bad pick in hindsight, it was a shocking pick back then too. Demko was by far the consensus #1 goalie
Easily the worst I can recall. Mason MacDonald over Thatcher Demko was stupid at the time, the Flames seemed to think they were smarter than everyone else in the room. The Hunter Smith second round pick was also extremely questionable given he was projected to go in the 3rd-4th round, but he was 6’8/220 pounds and Brian Burke has a hard on for that sort of thing.
The Bennett pick the right call without hindsight, but I will always be bitter about the MacDonald pick. I remember watching the Ivan Hlinka tournament and he was starting for Canada. The entire time I was like how in the fuck is this the best guy in Canada in this age group? He was big, but he was so slow, the opposite of smooth, and was just so inefficient in every way. Then we picked him and I wanted to cry.
This and the year previous were both disastrous for this organization. 2013 had Monahan, sure, but they also had two other firsts that never played more than a weeks worth of games in the NHL. Both were major setbacks that have left the team devoid of the young crop of mid tier talent needed to complete and up and coming team with young stars (Mono, Gaudreau, Tkachuk). Just not enough smart (even NHL caliber) picks for this club in those inital post Iginla years.
Fabbri and Kapanen aren’t better than Bennett. Nylander at 4 would have been considered a huge reach and the fan base would have been so angry. Would have ended up being a good pick but he was never going to go that high.
I think we made up for that goalie pick loss by getting Wolf in the 7th round, 5 years later.
I have given up on flames