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Originally Posted by Textcritic
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I generally agree, but would add something else. Brent Sutter is probably a very good coach, but I often wondered if he was all that effective at communicating his message, or galvanising his players. The coach is not just responsible to implement the system. He needs also to get his players to execute, and by extension then, he needs to be able to build a team from the variety of players on his roster. This was something that I thought Hartley did very well in his first two years with the Flames: he convinced his players to play for him and to play for each other. Brent never seemed to get that kind of response.
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Sure, but even when Hartley got them to play for him in the twilight of the country club we were still a bad team.
Brent said it best himself when he said there was a certain way you have to play to win a championship in this league. Brent wanted to win a championship and be believed there was no cutting corners in how you play to do that. I think that he's been proven very right by recent Stanley Cup winners. LA, Chicago and Boston all played a full 200 ft team game with everyone, star player to grinder buying in.
Brent probably could have moved to a run and gun, again to squeak into 8th and get feasted upon but what good would that have served besides perpetuating the incredible run of mediocrity that many fans seem look back at with a sense of success.
Either you're building, in all aspects from coaching, team culture, buy in and roster acquisitions to contend for the cup or you aren't. And if you aren't building in that direct then what the hell are you doing?
Sure, he was a stubborn guy, but I actually really respect him. He wanted the Flames to play like LA recently did. The players didn't want to. I guess he could have compromised, to the longer term detriment of the team. And now we blame him for trying to instill that type of responsibility and work ethic for the team by not producing results.
Meanwhile there's a giant elephant in the room that's just sacriligious to question for many fans. The one constant (besides Kiprusoff) in the years of ineptitude and failing to live up to potential was the captain. Geez, you'd think that maybe there was more culpability there?