BUFFALO, NY - JUNE 24: President of Hockey Operations for the Calgary Flames Brian Burke attends round one of the 2016 NHL Draft on June 24, 2016 in Buffalo, New York. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

BUFFALO, N.Y. — It's still not always easy to tell whether the Calgary Flames are going to make actual good decisions at any given time.

In general they're trending in the right direction, away from trading for Brandon Bolligs and signing Deryk Engellands, and toward identifying Jakub Nakladals and locking up Michael Froliks. They also realized that Kris Russell isn't key to their success, and traded him before the deadline.

There is, and should be, concern about what the team will do this summer, with Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan looking for new deals, as well as a few glaring holes in the lineup that need addressing. But on Friday night, they took a big step in the latter direction, trading what was admittedly a high second-round pick (No. 35 overall) for Brian Elliott.

There was doubly good news in the transaction: First, the team still entered Saturday with a pair of second rounders (from Dallas and Florida thanks to trades of Russell and Jiri Hudler, respectively). Second, the team avoided the very real concern that it would give up entirely too much for a goalie it didn't really need, or wouldn't provide the value they might have thought

“There's nothing that says we wouldn't extend Brian Elliott,” team president Brian Burke said on Saturday. “Obviously the advantage of the term is the acquisition cost is lower. If you want to get a goaltender who's under contract longer, there'll be a much higher acquisition cost and a much higher salary cost. So this fits for now, but we haven't ruled out extending him.”

Over the last three seasons, Elliott has been an arguably elite goaltender in this league, posting the eighth-best 5-on-5 save percentage (.930) among all goaltenders playing more than 4,500 minutes at full strength. The guys ahead of him are largely Vezina winners or those who have at least gotten into the conversation in the last few years.

In theory, you can chalk a lot of that up to the fact that Elliott has been playing behind a team coached by Ken Hitchcock, which probably helps (his average shot distance faced was among the highest in that group). Another issue is that Elliott doesn't exactly log heavy minutes — perpetually injured Craig Anderson has about 1,700 more minutes in that time — and Calgary sort of doesn't have a backup right now. But regardless, when it came to the goaltending options available, Brad Treliving did the best he possibly could have.

“We really like Brian,” Treliving said. “He'd been on our radar for quite some time. I think he's one of these guys that's really a real mature guy. You see his game: sort of a late bloomer, maybe he doesn't get the fanfare as a lot of other guys, but you really dig into the numbers and this guy's been one of the best goaltenders in the league for the last number of years. We thought that the contract and the acquisition cost was very reasonable.”

Let's put it this way: The team clearly needed a goalie to hold them over until Jon Gillies is ready for the show (whom all signs indicate is at least a few years away). In addition, Treliving said Saturday the team was excited about Tyler Parsons, the well-regarded American goalie (.921 SV% last year) in the OHL they took in the second round.

Tampa allegedly wanted the No. 6 overall pick (a spot where the Flames got well-regarded Matthew Tkachuk) for Ben Bishop, who Calgary then would have had to extend for something in the neighborhood of seven years and $49 million. You can never go wrong trading for a guy like Bishop, who's fantastic as well, but because Calgary has those big-money contracts to sign real soon, maybe dropping $7 million a year on goalie — no matter how good — wouldn't have been prudent. Almost certainly, giving him seven years, and pushing Gillies' arrival in the league back half a decade would have likewise been unwise.

But what about Marc-Andre Fleury? The Penguins' rumored ask of No. 6 always seemed to high to be realistic, and even if you're using two second-round picks (or something like that) you're getting what is probably a pretty good goalie signed for just three more years at a more reasonable price point. But he's not as good as either Elliott or Bishop statistically, and more to the point is coming off two concussions. Lots of question marks there.

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