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Originally Posted by Textcritic
It's not just Treliving. Sutter himself has confirmed that they have been in regular communication for what seems like a long time now. We know that Treliving was waiting on Peters to become available, but we do not know that he did not have a conversation with Sutter prior to that. Based on comments by both Treliving and Sutter that certainly seems likely. Sutter officially retired from coaching a couple months after Peters was hired, and I think it is possible that he informally took himself out of the running for the Flames job prior to that. In Sutter's interviews from the past several days it seems pretty clear that an incentive for taking the job is the makeup of current roster, so it would then be unsurprising if there was a lower level of interest on his end with different roster configurations—whatever those may have been.
I believe that in the off-season the decision on a head coach was always set on one of either Sutter or Ward. The most popular opinion here seems to be that Ward was Treliving's pick, and Sutter was the owners, and that ownership deferred to Treliving but have now pulled rank to hire their first choice.
However, it is also possible that the situation was reversed: perhaps Treliving's first choice was Sutter, but ownership was more set on Ward as a cost-saving measure while staring down millions of dollars of losses during the pandemic. Perhaps it was a group decision from the beginning to try something, and then to alter course when it was very clearly not working at all. Correcting the mistake of hiring Ward was definitely much easier to swallow than it would have been attempting to correct the mistake of a much higher dollar commitment to Sutter in the first place.
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Also possible Sutter was the first choice but declined for whatever reasons. For one, he puts family above all and taking the job in the midst of Covid isn’t great for family. What’s more, the team still has some holes that could be filled in due course. If we can see it, clearly DS can too. Without Covid, most anticipated upward movement of the salary cap. A few million more could have meant a Toffoli like player instead of Leivo or Simon.
Coaches have an impact timeframe and a shelf life. Maybe the group felt extending the timing was the way to go. DS himself said he owed a lot to ownership. To me the rhetoric sounded as if he wasn’t prepared for this at this moment but that it was a necessary last resort and that it was a bit of favor / loyalty.