(Ed. Note: There’s entirely too much sunshine in the summer. So your friends at Puck Daddy are offering a month of thrown shade and perpetual gloom. Behold, our Summer of Disappointment series, in which we ask fans of all 30 teams to recall the biggest bummer moments, teams and players in franchise history! Please wade into their misery like a freezing resort pool, and add your own choices in the comments!)

Written by Ryan Lambert of Puck Daddy



Most Disappointing Team: 2011-2012 Calgary Flames

It's hard to pick just one for this team, because they've only had four 100-point seasons in franchise history, so there's a lot of disappointment to choose from. I went with 2011-12 because that was the second year in a row in which the team — which, on paper, was decent but no great shakes — failed to make the playoffs after being pretty good for the second half of the 2000s.



That was when they should have blown it up. Traded everybody and started stockpiling picks. But Darryl Sutter and then Jay Feaster were still bumbling around and thinking this 90-point team could edge its way into the playoffs the next year (likely on the orders of management). That was the problem: They were always just not-bad enough to convince people that they might just make it the next year.



It's hard to choose anything but 2011-12, though, because after that the bottom dropped out; it was the Flames' last "great" "hurrah." They put up 42 points in the lockout year, then 77. Now the rebuild is actually happening, only three years behind schedule.



This overlooks the "Young Guns" era (the less said, the better), and in 1991-92 they went from 100 points to 74 just three seasons after winning a Cup. But that team got dismantled. Specifically, it was gutted of its depth, but still rebounded the next year to make the playoffs again, when that feat was harder to accomplish.



That 2011-12 season, though, signaled the beginning of what looks to be a long, slow descent into badness.

















View photos CALGARY, CANADA - JANUARY 12: Calgary Flames General Manager Jay Feaster addresses the media after trading Rene Bourque, a second round pick and prospect Patrick Holland to the Montreal Canadiens for Michael Cammalleri, a 5th round pick and prospect Kari Ramo on January 12, 2012 at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Terence Leung/NHLI via Getty Images) More

Most Disappointing Calgary Flame: Daniel Tkaczuk



It's not really ever fair to say, "Oh, if only Team X had picked Player Y instead of who they picked. The whole franchise would be so different!" Maybe, maybe not. Unless you're particularly good with quantum physics, there's not really much way of knowing for sure how Player Y would have done instead.



And while the 1997 NHL Entry Draft was not a particularly great one or anything, you'd have to say that No. 6 overall Daniel Tkaczuk was as big a swing and a miss as a team made in the late 1990s overall (Pavel Brendl at No. 4 overall two years later was on par or maybe even worse, and Nashville's Brian Finley, who went No. 6 in 1999 not far behind, but offering yet another cautionary tale about picking a goalie high in the first round).



Guys on the board when Tkaczuk went to Calgary: future Hall of Famer Marian Hossa, Sergei Samsonov, Danny Cleary, and Brenden Morrow, among others.



And to be clear: The list of "Disappointing Calgary Flames" is a long and distinguished one. But Tkaczuk had 11 points in 19 games and was never heard from in the bigs again. In fact, he went from playing those 19 games for Calgary in 2001 to the Italian league by 2004-05. That's quite a tumble.













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