Voting for Coates here is like voting for Rudy as one of the great Fighting Irish of all time. Plucky, did what he could with what he had to work with.
I’m still voting for the guy who turned the franchise around and is responsible for the most team success since 1989. Acquiring Reinprecht, Warrener, Kipper, Nilsson, Nieminen, Simon, Langkow, Tanguay, Huselius, Jokinen were some great hockey trades. Some of the UfA signings were awfully good, like Hamrlik.
He has far too many warts and blunders to suggest he shouldn’t have been fired. Leclerc, Kotalik, not getting value for Phaneuf, trading guys like Lydman and Stralman for peanuts, the drafting strategy etc. But when it’s all said and done, he gave us some excellent hockey teams. I suppose in essence my vote is for the Sutter era Flames being the best incarnation of the team after the Fletcher elite teams.
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