There's not a single answer to the question as always there's a lot of moving parts in a professional sports team. Unfortunately I would put coaching at the top of the list. Flames fans going back to the 90's have seen some pretty substandard coaching over the decades but I will remember Gulutzan for the absolute worst at players utilization. Simply far too many puzzling and questionable roster decisions especially the powerplay where they wasted half a season without deploying their best offensive defenseman on the 1st unit. Compound the poor roster decisions with the issue of this team never being ready to start games and the coach really made things harder on himself as well as his players. What doesn't get talked about enough is that there simply hasn't been that resolve in this team. When things go bad in a game it just snowballs. How many times have we heard fans complain because he didn't use a timeout when the Flame give up quick goals and melt down? Lots and I'm not saying that timeout are the answer. I'm saying this team is so fragile mentally that when things go bad they crumble and it's a stark contract from Hartley who with a lot of the same players installed a confidence that no game was over until the 20 minute mark of the 3rd period. It's obvious the coach has a lot of influence over this given the contrast between the Hartley and Gulutzan Flames. I hated to bring Hartley into the conversation because IMO he was not a long term answer either so lets put that to bed. The bottom line is that Treliving needs to find a head coach that has up to date systems not dissimilar from Gulutzan but has a much better feel for player utilization and fills the leadership void that is clearly lacking in the locker room.
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