Kill the Messenger: Jay Feaster is NOT a Bum. And I Can Prove It.

Feaster has been smart so far in not making moves just for the sake of making moves.  He refrained from taking part in the FA frenzy that saw James Wisniewski sign that ridiculous $5.5 million contract and, though his strategy resulted in paying Anton Babchuk ~2.5 million, it also landed his team the services of Scott Hannan for a mere $1 million (and, though he has struggled a little, he is well worth that contract).  But what about the deals Feaster has made?  Let's take a look at the players the Flames have acquired under Jay Feaster via trade.

Jay Feaster doing his best Brent Butt impression

Chris Butler

Butler is one player, I think we can all agree, who has smashed all expectations leveled at him since his acquisition.  After the infamous (for no particular reason) Robyn Regehr trade with Buffalo, Jay said in an interview that he and the coaching staff saw him as a #5 defenseman at this point.  To this point in the season he has been, at worst, a #3 defenseman for the Flames.  He, along with Jay Bouwmeester, plays against the other teams' best forwards at even strength (1.806 Corsi Rel QoC, 4th (1st among dmen)), starts in the offensive zone a mere 43.6% of the time (44.6% for Bouwmeester) and still manages to drive possession--as seen in his positive on ice Corsi (1.96, 6th on the team--9.2 Corsi Rel, 4th).  If someone had told me that Chris Butler would replace EVERYTHING Robyn Regehr brought to the team (for a quarter of the cost) I would not have believed them.  Of course, Butler's physical game has a way to go to compare to Regehr's... so I guess not everything was replaced.
The catch here is that Butler's playing the best hockey of his life right now... we'll see if he can sustain it.  All the same, I think it's pretty clear that the Flames picked up a legitimate top 4 defenseman.

Paul Byron

I don't think Byron will ever blow anyone away with his offensive stats, but he was exactly the player the Flames needed--he's fast, young, and skilled.  He's already a passable 3rd line winger, so it isn't outside the realms of possibility that he could become a top 6 forward.  I'm not exactly holding my breath for that, but I would like Byron to stick around in a Flames jersey for a long time.  My 1st (and 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc) thought the 1st time I saw him play was: "Holly [shoot] is he fast!"

Roman Horak

Horak seems to already have achieved the potential most experts projected him to have--at the age of 20.  It's not outside the realm of possibility for Horak to become a legitimate top 6 forward in the future... again though, I wouldn't be surprised if he stayed a 3rd line center for the rest of his career either.  The thing I like most about Horak is his 2way game.  The fact that he can play effectively at both ends of the ice at his age... he's even seen time on the Flames' penalty kill.  One of the few pleasant rookie surprises the Flames have enjoyed in the last decade or so.  The difficulty of his icetime has been reduced somewhat recently, with the result that his possession numbers have improved slightly.  He's still riding some favourable percentages (14.3 sh% for example) so I wouldn't expect him to continue scoring at the rate he has been so far.  Still, promising.

Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond

I'll start by saying this trade irked me right from the beginning.  It sounds like Sutter pushed for this one, though, so... I don't know.  I have no comprehension of why Sutter (allegedly) likes Leblond so much.  He doesn't appear to have any function that I can see, other than taking bad penalties.  Still, if anyone was expecting something to come of this acquisition, something was unhinged in their head.

Lee Stempniak

I know he hasn't been scoring all that much since he joined the Flames, and they gave up a very good 2way center (Daymond Langkow) in the process, but Stempniak has actually been fairly good.  He's put up some decent possession numbers (7.3 Corsi Rel) against 3rd line competition.  More importantly, he's been a fixture on the penalty kill, and (in my opinion) he's done fairly well.  Best of all, he costs about half as much as Langkow did.  While I wouldn't try to claim the Flames won this trade, they didn't exactly lose either.