Article content

This in from hockey columnist Ryan Lambert of Yahoo Sports, his lightning strike of a take that Calgary Flames GM Brad Treliving should be fired for making the Milan Lucic for James Neal trade: “Even with the acknowledgement that the James Neal situation had become untenable in Calgary, the decision to trade him for Milan Lucic of all the people in the league should be considered a fireable offense… There were other routes out of this disaster of a deal than taking on one of the two or three worst contracts in the league. This was Brad Treliving deciding to fix the hole he accidentally put in the dining room wall by driving a bulldozer through the house.”

Lambert argued that James Neal is the more likely player of the two to rebound and might be a fit with Connor McDavid, something that was tried repeatedly with Lucic and failed repeatedly with Lucic. Buying out Neal would have been a better option, but best of all would have been Lucic going to Vancouver, Lambert said.