Sutter left the team in a better state than he inherited it, both in popularity and in player quality, and it's not like we had good prospects before him. What Darryl "ruined" was basicly what he had built. This is not to say that he was a great GM, but he wasn't bad either.
I also think Darryl Sutters legacy might look a lot better if a better GM had taken over after him. I think the right kind of GM could have turned what we had in veterans into a decent bunch of assets and made the turnaround much quicker (and much more likely to happen within a decade, if we're honest about it).
A guy like Feaster could be right guy for a team that does better in the standings than in ticket sales and image. The Flames situation was the exact opposite. The last thing we needed was a guy who's weaknesses are trading and evaluating hockey talent.
Or, if you really wanted to make Feaster the GM, at least you needed to fire him when the rebuild started. Instead we let him hang around just long enough so he could show his ineptitude in trading away our biggest assets. As a result, the next GM / Burke may start with a clean slate, but a lot less in assets than a better/different GM would have left the team with.
However, I don't blame Feaster. I'm sure he did the best he could, and at the end of the day I do believe he made improvements in drafting and development. I blame the guys above him. Feaster was the easy choice for the GM, he was never a good choice.
Just like Darryl was consistently bad in hiring coaches (his biggest weakness IMO), the organization has done even worse with it's GM's, and at some point you have to stop blaming the GM's and start blaming the guys that hire the GM's.
|