Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
He really seemed to over react to losing in the first round in that first year after the lockout. He fired himself because he thought he wasn't a good coach for the new nhl is how it seemed to me.
I also think he became a crappier GM once he was no longer a coach. His GM moves while a coach were good. He seemed to get progressively worse as a GM as he became further and further removed from the dressing room.
It really does make you wonder what could have been.
|
I think this sums it up. My opinion on this (and just my opinion, not pretending it's a fact) is that as a GM (solo GM) he was never able to master the skill of matching coach to player(s). This is probably a pretty key skill for any GM to have, figuring out how to maximise the coaches style by giving him the tools he needs.
Clearly Sutter is an amazing coach, one of the best. And he was actually a pretty good GM, when he was acquiring resources for himself. Probably was too much to do both jobs, so he took a step back, and I think he simply struggled to be able to properly identify what would work best for his coaches. He kept making personel decisions that he would make if he was the one using the assets, and became frustrated when the coaches weren't using the teams he built the way he would.
So then he spent the rest of his time continuing to build teams for himself, and trying to find a coach that would coach just like him. Which lead to the hiring of his brother, but even that wasn't a close enough match. Sounds like he realized it near the end and wanted to make the move back to both roles (at least temporarily), but got vetoed by management and they punted him instead and kept his brother on as coach. Really unfortunate it took him that long to bumble around and figure it out, but I do actually believe the best thing for the team would have been for Darryl to keep both roles, and have a very helpful AGM who could eliviate his work load.