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Treliving needs to continue pushing right buttons for Flames

Ottawa Senators v Calgary Flames

CALGARY, CANADA - FEBRUARY 27: General manager Brad Treliving of the Calgary Flames address the media before the trade deadline prior to the team’s NHL game against the Ottawa Senators at the Scotiabank Saddledome on February 27, 2016 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

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Each day in the month of August we’ll be examining a different NHL team — from looking back at last season to discussing a player under pressure to identifying X-factors to asking questions about the future. Today we look at the Calgary Flames.

Since taking over as general manager of the Flames in 2014, Brad Treliving has done a reasonably good job. His team hasn’t made the playoffs every year under his watch, but he managed to build a team that won the Pacific Division and the Western Conference last year.

Unfortunately for Calgary, they flamed out (sorry!) of the playoffs in the first round last spring. Now, the challenge for Treliving is to find a way for him to get even more out of his roster. Given the team’s cap situation, it was difficult for him to go out and really make this team better on paper. For the most part, the core you saw last year is the core they’ll roll with in 2019-20.

Unlike last year, everybody will see the Flames coming this time around. Again, they were the class of the Western Conference during the regular season, so the rest of the league knows what they’re capable of. It’s not like we didn’t know Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Matthew Tkachuk and Mark Giordano were great players, but this was a team that missed the postseason by 11 points in 2018. They exceeded the pre-season expectations.
[MORE: 2018-19 review | 3 Questions |Talbot the X-Factor]

Now, it’s up to Treliving to continue pressing all the right buttons in order for this team to progress to the next level. He added Milan Lucic and Cam Talbot to the roster, but his work isn’t over just yet. In order for the Flames to be the class of the West, he’ll have to make sure he gets Tkachuk under contract. The restricted free agent had 77 points in 80 games and he brings that physical element that’s so key in the Western Conference.

“What we’ve tried to do a little bit this summer and even going into last year was the introduction of a lot of young players over the last year,” Treliving said, per NHL.com. “We think we’ve got some good young players here. A lot of them got their feet wet last year, and we’re looking for them to continue to grow.

“There’s young players that we feel still have room to grow. The bulk of our team is still a fairly young group. We want to give them the opportunity to continue to grab and grow their role.”

Treliving is right. His team is still young. The core forwards are all 25 or younger, so there’s room for them to grow but this is an important year for the entire team. In order for them to take the next step, Treliving will have to improve this roster throughout the season. The Flames have all their own draft picks except their fourth-rounder, which means they’ll have the ammo to make a significant deal during the season/before the trade deadline.

Can he add the right pieces as the season progresses?

The Flames’ biggest question mark is still between the pipes. Last year, the duo of David Rittich and Mike Smith helped the team collect 107 points. Now, Smith is gone and they replaced him with Cam Talbot. Is a Talbot-Rittich duo better than what they had last year? That’s very debatable. But we’ll find out soon enough.

MORE:
ProHockeyTalk’s 2019 NHL free agency tracker
Your 2019-20 NHL on NBC TV schedule

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Joey Alfieri is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @joeyalfieri.