Times are tough for the Calgary Flames and there's only one person to blame.
Flames general manager Brad Treliving addressed the state of the team on Friday, less than 24 hours after Calgary suffered its sixth straight loss and held a players-only meeting. In a moment of brutal honesty, Treliving laid the responsibility for the Flames' woes at his own feet.
"I take the responsibility for the performance of the team. That's first and foremost. This is my responsibility," Treliving said, per Postmedia's Wes Gilbertson. "When you go through adversity, there are two ways you can go through it. I believe in this group. I believe that when you're going through difficult times, you push and support people, you don't throw bodies on the tarmac. And that's what we're going to do here. This is a good group that's underperforming."
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Treliving's comments come on the heels of the Flames' latest defeat, a 5-0 demolition by the St. Louis Blues. Not only was Thursday's loss the sixth in a row for the Flames, it was also the sixth consecutive game in which the team had surrendered three or more goals.
Calgary has won just 10 games from the first 25 of the season — a major downgrade for a team that came into the season as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. Despite the hugely disappointing start to the campaign, Treliving stressed that he was nowhere near ready to push the panic button.
It's all about blocking out the noise and getting back to what made the Flames a 50-win, 107-point team a season ago.
"We have to find a way to get back to being a good group that's performing," Treliving said. "I don't stay in tune to the social media world but the last couple of days, I've been asked about changes. The coaches aren't going anywhere. Our top players aren't going anywhere. So while the outside world wants to — and rightly so — count us out, this is when you bunker in and you get into the foxhole and you try to make your team better. And it starts with making this group better."
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In light of the drastic coaching change made by fellow a Canadian team earlier this week, there may be some people clamoring for a headline-grabbing front-office shuffle or player trade by the Flames in order to spark life into the club. But Treliving says that he's going to stay the course for now and partake in some self-reflection along the way.
"I think honesty is the best approach," he said. "We know we're not playing well. We don't need to be told. So let's dig into it. Let's face it head-on. Let's deal with it as a group. Let's deal with it individually. It starts with the [general] manager. The manager has been horses—."