Jay Feaster update (Stan Fischler interview)

[Husky]

So funny to read. Feaster can't get credit for drafting cause he basically listened to scouts. Yet I bet on the ror fiasco he probably relied on CBA specialists who screwed up ...yet feaster gets the blame.

[Sylvanfan]

Feaster changed his tune and direction too many times. Ultimately that was never going to lead the team anywhere. One year they would say size be damned we need hockey sense. Next season the team is too small and easy to play against.

To me he seemed too much of Ken Kings yes man, willing to sell the next line to the public. The drafting fared okay under him, and getting out of Rene Bourque's contract was a good move. Other than that pretty much just waiting for other contracts to expire and making the wrong guy in Regehr want out of town.

He might still be getting paid by the Flames too, and that may be why he's a bit vanilla with his comments. Don't kid ourselves the team could be in a much better place now had he been a more decisive leader when the team really needed one in 2012.

[Robbob]

at the end of the day he isn't the worst gm the flames have had. Moving on.

[MarkGio]

Id like to know who the worst Flames GM was, in ranking order. I bet Feaster surprises a few people, and I'm not a fan of Feaster.

I think the rankings would be unfair. For example, Sutter was acting head coach, GM, scout, farm team GM and everything in between, whereas Trevy has 3 assistants and a highly seasoned mentor, all whom have no mandate to win hockey games. Obviously the results are going to favor Trevy.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Split98

He didn't hire scouts or of highschool last I checked. Same as any job ever: he looked at their body of work; listened to their philosophies and their theories in what they are looking for in a player; and evaluated their knowledge and past performance to determine if he trusted their decision making.

A good talker such as Weisbrod could fake him out and he wouldn't even know it. He'd have him saying what he thought were cool sayings such as post-apex and thinking we were buying it.

Who was the scout who sold him on Cervenka and told him he was a centre? If he had some hockey knowledge he should have known what he was getting, another of his 17 small, don't touch me LWrs.

It isn't just drafting either, it's examples such as his Regehr trade that show his incompetence at judging players.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by MarkGio

Id like to know who the worst Flames GM was, in ranking order. I bet Feaster surprises a few people, and I'm not a fan of Feaster.

I think the rankings would be unfair. For example, Sutter was acting head coach, GM, scout, farm team GM and everything in between, whereas Trevy has 3 assistants and a highly seasoned mentor, all whom have no mandate to win hockey games. Obviously the results are going to favor Trevy.

Risebrough.

[Drury18]

Originally Posted by MarkGio

Id like to know who the worst Flames GM was, in ranking order. I bet Feaster surprises a few people, and I'm not a fan of Feaster.

I think the rankings would be unfair. For example, Sutter was acting head coach, GM, scout, farm team GM and everything in between, whereas Trevy has 3 assistants and a highly seasoned mentor, all whom have no mandate to win hockey games. Obviously the results are going to favor Trevy.

Personally, I have Al Coates as the worst Flames GM. He was in charge during the young gun era and seemed like he just couldn't get that rebuild going. It just seemed like the same thing over and over, no attempts to better the team because he was handcuffed by this or that. Yes, the finances changed after the CBA and all that, but he just never seemed to adapt to the changes and the team suffered. A good GM should have found ways to be smarter then the financial restrictions, he seemed to use them as his excuse to ice a poor team.

His trades weren't completely awful http://www.nhltradetracker.com/user/...l_Coates/163/3) but the drafting and inability to adapt to the new market just killed the Flames for a good while after he was let go.

While I dislike Feaster, I would be hard pressed to say that he has left us in a position where we have no future and still need to put major pieces in place to rebuild. We have some very good youth that are showing promise here and now rather then having to say "Well they look good on paper so just give them time".

[Jacks]

Doug Risebrough was the worst GM and it's not even close.

To Tor:
Gilmour
Nattress
Manderville
Macoun
Wamsley

To Cal:
Leeman
Berube
Godynyuk
Petit
Reese

There is no defending that steaming coil of stink.

[ricosuave]

In the end, Feaster, like almost ALL GMs, did some good things, did some poor things, and is now no longer employed with us.

You can say that about almost every GM.

[gargamel]

He made some moves that I liked and some moves that were questionable at best, but I'll always have a soft spot for Feaster because he got us Gaudreau. Say what you want about how little a GM affects draft selections, but I don't think anyone really believes that Gaudreau would be a Flame if either Sutter or Burke had been our GM in 2011.

[Split98]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

A good talker such as Weisbrod could fake him out and he wouldn't even know it. He'd have him saying what he thought were cool sayings such as post-apex and thinking we were buying it.

Who was the scout who sold him on Cervenka and told him he was a centre? If he had some hockey knowledge he should have known what he was getting, another of his 17 small, don't touch me LWrs.

It isn't just drafting either, it's examples such as his Regehr trade that show his incompetence at judging players.

Every single successful person has made a mistake. And I'd much rather go with a GM willing to take the occasional risk than one that always goes with the safe bet. It is very easy to point and laugh at the Cervenka signing now, but at the time it was a very interesting grab with potential to be quite a steal... and it cost us nothing. We had 2 Czech born players on the team to help him acclimate, and we were even talking about bringing Jagr in to play with him. There was skepticism, absolutely, but there was also excitement in 'what IF this guy works out?'. It was a good signing, and I really wouldn't hold it against him that Cervenka didn't work out. The dude had a blood clot and missed training camp. Pretty tough to learn a new league and teammates you can't talk to when you miss all of training camp.

I'm confused, are you arguing that the drafting was poor under Feaster? Personally, I'm very happy with his draft results and am expressing that I'm impressed he had the self awareness to let people he trusted advise him on who to draft... which worked out very well. And last I checked, Feaster didn't draft Regehr...

[Lanny_McDonald]

Feaster gets an awful bad go of it here. Go through our prospect list and think of how they got here.

1. Gaudreau - Feaster
2. Bennett - - Burke/Treliving
3. Baertschi - Feaster
4. Poirier - Feaster (traded for pick)
5. Granlund - Feaster
6. Klimchuk - Feaster (traded for pick)
7. Wotherspoon - Feaster
8. Reinhart - Sutter
9. Ortio - Sutter
10. Gillies - Feaster
11. Jankowski - Feaster
12. Sieloff - Feaster (traded for pick)
13. Arnold - Sutter
14. Knight - Feaster (sign as a FA)
15. Ferland - Sutter

For having the job for only 1255 days he managed to restock our system to where we have incredible depth. That was pretty impressive given the scorched earth Sutter left behind as he continued to try and build a team around Iginla when his best-before date had expired. When you look at our future and see it looking so bright, remember to thank Jay Feaster. He was integral in restocking the system.

[badger89]

The end result for Feaster ended up being good (restocking the cupboards) but it could have ended up very bad if he landed B Richards or lost picks for nothing in the ROR fiasco. He was very lucky to dodge two bullets there.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Split98

...I'm confused, are you arguing that the drafting was poor under Feaster? Personally, I'm very happy with his draft results and am expressing that I'm impressed he had the self awareness to let people he trusted advise him on who to draft... which worked out very well. And last I checked, Feaster didn't draft Regehr...

Your confusion is understandable. The argument basically goes like this:
· Feaster doesn't know anything, hence should not receive any credit for any of the players who were drafted under his watch. Furthermore, he should get no credit for overseeing the scouting staff, since he doesn't know anything, and thus is incapable to know whether or not they were competent.
· However, Feaster does bear the responsibility for any controversial picks made on his watch, and for his middling draft record from his time in TB, because he is not a very good GM, and cannot properly assess talent.
· Finally, while Feaster bears responsibility for his draft record in TB, this also precludes his selection of Steve Stamkos, because virtually everyone with the same utter dearth of hockey knowledge that he possesses would also have made that same pick.

In the end, there are a dozen ways to spin Feaster's abilities into a cesspool of incompetence, so long as every scenario is editorialised in such a way that would eliminate the possibility of any potential success by reducing it to a product of unsubstantiated mitigating factors.

[Textcritic]

Feaster was not a great GM in his time in Calgary.
Feaster was not a terrible GM in his time in Calgary.

Both are true, and both are also the result of things for which he should be credited and blamed, but also with the clear recognition that many such things took place amid circumstances beyond his own control.

[Mango]

Originally Posted by badger89

The end result for Feaster ended up being good (restocking the cupboards) but it could have ended up very bad if he landed B Richards or lost picks for nothing in the ROR fiasco. He was very lucky to dodge two bullets there.

He absolutely was.

I have no doubt Feaster is a nice guy. However, one thing really sticks out during this tenure. He tried to act smarter than everyone else. He threw around big words in a way to soften the blow of something bad that was about to or did happen. The Jankowski pick, regardless of the hand Weisbrod played, was a "we know something you don't and hence, the rest of you are dumb" pick. I still personally think it's a brutal pick and he'll amount to very little. I guess it would be nice to be wrong, but it'll take a lot of progression in the next year to make it look otherwise.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Jacks

There is no defending that steaming coil of stink.

Unless Doug's hands were tied by off-ice issues, beyond his control.

[mac_82]

Where was Feaster spotted? I clearly missed that thread.

[Joe Nieuwendyk]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Doug Risebrough was the worst GM and it's not even close.

To Tor:
Gilmour
Nattress
Manderville
Macoun
Wamsley

To Cal:
Leeman
Berube
Godynyuk
Petit
Reese

There is no defending that steaming coil of stink.

It's like that old saying - "The team that gets the four best players wins the trade"

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by troutman

Unless Doug's hands were tied by off-ice issues, beyond his control.

There were definite off-ice issues, but he wasn't forced to be fleeced.

As well, Leeman had the falling out with his team-mates, in a similar sour environment that Gilmour was in.

Fletcher absolutely torched us.