[wingmaker]

Really like Bob Hartley. Loved his interviews, loved his attitude towards teaching, and whatever went on behind the scenes, he always talked a good game about respecting players and treating people properly. I definitely thought he had one more year to prove himself.

That said, the biggest problem I had with this season was what happened in January and February following the 9 game winning streak. Yes the goalies were terrible to start the year, yes the defensemen were bad to start the year. But from January on both Ramo and Ortio did a reasonable job between the pipes, Hamilton and Giordano turned in strong performances, Backlund ended up having a career year, etc. And yet the team totally floundered.

If the Flames had really just had a bad start and then played well from then on but still missed the playoffs, I would have felt pretty good about the season. But they didn't. They fell apart in the middle of the season with terrible special teams and no team play to match the career years of the individual players. When you go through the line-up, it's hard to say players had bad seasons. Many of them even had excellent seasons. And yet they finished 20 points lower in the standings. That falls one hundred percent on coaching, to me. Goaltending gets the goat horns for the first two months and definitely is the biggest weakness on the team, but team play should have been able to overcome that weakness more often than it did in the second half of the season.