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I think he certainly shoulders a large part of the blame for this, but not just because of what happened in Calgary, but for his middling results in five years of NHL coaching. No, it's not all his fault, but this is a significant part of my posts that you are missing—the blame for what happened in Calgary during B. Sutter's tenure does not rest on one principal: it was a group effort that included Sutter. Again, I'm a little confused as to why you are so happy to absolve him for any responsibility.
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Middling results? With a team that bought into his system he went 97-56-11 in New Jersey. Are you going to blame Brodeur's melt-down in game 7 on Sutter now too? Would be appropriate using that logic.
You also said he has a history of not getting the best out of players yet Parise turned into a superstar under his tenure and Zajac went from sophomore slump to a top 6 center. Just two examples. Salvador, Oduya, others all flourished under him. Hmm, I wonder what the difference was between NJ and Calgary. Maybe one of the differences was that NJ had better team leadership?
Anyway, I'm not saying Sutter is the bees knees. My basic point is this: Sutter's impact on the Flames ineptitude is greatly overrated. Sutter happened to preside over a period where the wheels were going to fall off anyway. People searching for causality will blame Sutter where there were much more fundamental reasons at work. Those being the team talent was overrated by most everyone, the team got older and less skilled, the team's leadership was very poor, the team had no young players coming in, and the makeup of the team with way too much money spent on defence were main reasons for the how bad they were.
Sure maybe Sutter could have squeezed water from a stone and squeaked into 8th but lets be real here. That team stunk for much greater reasons and Sutter was one of the only honest guys saying that a rebuild needed to happen.
But now, in that thankless position, we can all take turns throwing stones instead of looking at likely were the real issues.