Quote:
Originally Posted by browna
A stat I had to look up. Prior to Thursday, Stempniak played 575 NHL reg season games and had 3 fights. He's since been forced into 2 fights in back to back games, and the Flames players and coaches are apparently fine with this, as no formal retribution was enacted on the assaulting player, or an equivalent player on the other roster after either of those incidents. Back to back games, at home, no less. Sickening for a team that, if nothing else, should be showing some pride.
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This is a point that cannot be understated. How Hartley stands on the bench and watches one of his few veteran skill players (and leaders) get forced into a fight after a clean hit and beaten up badly, and then does nothing at all about it is simply astounding to me.
Losing sucks, losing to the Oilers sucks exponentially more, but this is the first year of a rebuild and frankly I'm not expecting anything more then 29th or 30th in the league, I don't think many fans are. But no matter how lacking in skill the team might be there is simply no reason to be lacking in heart and definitely no reason to let some gutless puke beat down one of your vets after he delivered a good, clean body check.
I've never liked Harley and can't really forgive him for this. Despite some posters on here raving about how great of a coach he was in the first 10 games of the year, reality is he has always been a poor to average coach, always. All you need to do is watch his in game management; glaring, team deflating issues like the one in question aside, he has problems matching lines even at home, won't keep together line combinations that have proven success because of a momentary dip in production not to mention the fact that he clearly has "his guys" who can do no wrong and get rewarded with unwarranted levels of ice time because of it.
As someone above asked, what would have happened if DS was still coaching the team yesterday? I don't know for sure, but I think we all know that Andrew Ference would be looking a lot worse this morning then Lee Stempniak. Sutter, like most good coaches, would never let something like that happen to one of his veteran leaders (or, anyone of his team for that matter), especially if he was coaching a team that has exactly 0% chance of making the playoffs this season. Players and coaches around the league will have watched the highlights from our game last night and will come away with one thing: the Flames don't and won't stand up for themselves, push them around and take liberties whenever possible, it works.
The whole thing sickens me, just because we're going to be bad this year (and probably the next few) doesn't me we have a have a bad coach as well. Please fire Hartley and get someone behind the bench that sticks up for his team (among many other things) and someone that can start teaching these young players the right way to play this game.