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Originally Posted by Rerun
Fair points also but I also think that the biggest contributing factor to the current Flames success is the overwhelming change in culture. Its been a long time since I've watched a Flames team play with such determination and tenacity. They're skating the whole 60 minutes and frankly, in a large part of the games played, have totally out worked the opposition.
This is because the coach is now allowed to be the coach. He lays down the plan and the whole team follows. He's got them playing an exciting brand of hockey. We may not (and probably most likely won't) win more games than we lose but if they keep playing the way they are, we may become a contender sooner than a lot of people (me included) thought.
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I agree with you here.
I also think Brent was allowed to coach his way just as much as Hartley is. The goals against category under Brent was drastically improved in his first season after Keenan was canned (5th), which suggests to me that the team did, in fact, buy into the way he was coaching them to play. Sutter even admitted he had the team focusing too much on defense (Bouwmeester's numbers being a prime example)
The real culture change, IMO, was Feaster admitting a rebuild was late/inevitable and moving out pieces that should have been moved multiple seasons ago. Again, some will see Iginla being traded as addition by subtraction. I maintain the organization's message to both their fans and players grew stale and that's not something I can pin on Iginla alone. Ownership needed a dose of "intellectual honesty"
I don't understand the opinion of Brent being the best coach for a rebuild. His Devils teams weren't young. He's best served coaching junior hockey imo.