Kesler's response was perfect, exactly what he should have said. Be worried if I was a Nucks fan and he said anything else.
As for the rest of it, I actually think the Flames assembled their best team under Sutter in Keenan's final year. The team was ticking along great, Cammy and Iggy were playing great, they finally upgrade the centre position with Jokinen and were poised. Then they get hit with some pretty rough injuries. Sutter gambled and spent ownerships money right the cap, so the injuries hurt even more than they should and a team that was the best in the division that year, fell into a tough spot. Injuries then made it tough to get through the first round. Not making excuses, but in the NHL you need everything to fall into place luck wise as well to succeed, and in that year the Flames didnt.
After that, probably because they'd given Sutter so much leeway and money that I believe that ownership group started to lose faith in Sutter and stopped allowing him to do exactly what he wanted, and started to influence his decisions which IMO (again all opinion here) is where things started to go bad for Sutter. Forced to fire Keenan (apparently) when he didn't want to, what was the influence on the Neuf deal?, did they influence his thoughts in what to do with Iggy, and he was blocked in relieving his brother and got the axe himself. That's what I see happened with the Flames coupled with the obvious decline of our key players.
As for the Nucks, it won't be completely evident what happened to them until its done and we can apply hindsight. But there does appear to be a lot of similarities between the situations, other than the Nucks have had more success with their version of the team. I do think there is a good chance they are already on the decline, but if they aren't, this Torts experiment is for sure there last kick at the can because that core at most has 2 more years IMO to try and win, and not unlike the Flames, they aren't positioned with there prospects for a seamless passing of the torch.
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