Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
Again it's comments like this that I object to
"BT gets pretty close to a free pass for accelerating the rebuild and the hamonic fiasco"
People have specifically outlined those as negatives on his resume (along with bad UFAs) so it's not like people are giving him a free pass, they just see the positive outweighing the negatives.
And there is no doubt that the organization made a massive mistake in not starting to move out the former core (Iginla, Regehr, Kipper) until it was too late to extract value. I think that was likely an ownership mandate largely based on a desire to win a cup with #12.
But yeah it hurt us big time long-term.
But the lack of scouts and farm team to me are largely an excuse for bad drafting. I'm not one to adhere to any draft rankings but he would have done a lot better if he had taken the Kevin Lowe approach and drafted off the THN draft magazine. Guys like Pelech and Chucko were surprise selections where they were picked.
My belief is that Sutter put constraints around the scouting team in terms of the type of player he wanted in the first round - with too much emphasis on size and not nearly enough on skill.
The draft for me is all about upside and skill.
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It wasn't that strong of a comment I don't think. How else should I have worded it? "BT gets the benefit of the doubt where Sutter's every fault is scrutinized to no end"?. Maybe there's not enough grey there either. I'm trying, honestly. Sometimes I can be pretty blunt and opinionated. Not meaning to rustle feathers but I do find it astounding BT recieved close to 4x the votes as Sutter when considering team success as a whole. Astounding might not be a strong enough word.
Simple question: Do Sutter's negatives outweigh the positives? Y/N? If the answer is no I dont see how he's not better than BT. BT has as many pros as cons, making him decisively average at best in my eyes. Was Sutter worse than average? His winning % and cup run would say he was a good GM just looking at it's simplest level. 5 straight playoff years. That's pretty good for a team coming out of a 7 year drought. Since 2009, we've made the playoffs three times (or four depending on Winnipeg series). Our long term outlook looks mediocre at the moment. So we have a rebuilt team that is average that is 50/50 to make the playoffs at all and gets absolutely embarrassed by non-Vancouver teams when they do make it. The last 11 years have been an awful time to be a Flames fan and the immediate future doesn't look great.