Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
It’s not about there being a story around Sutter’s comments. He made them, he knows. It’s about media and fans using it as another excuse to talk endlessly about their own personal gripes with Sutter. Just the same regurgitated nonsense by the same posters (not referring to you here, you’re always respectful even if i disagree) whining about Sutter. And honestly, is it necessary? If Pelletier was so great and so deserving of being the story, why hasn’t anyone even tried to make him the story? Sutter makes a comment and the media forget the kid’s game entirely. Fans don’t actually care about Pelletier, or Phillips, because if we’re being honest they aren’t the most exciting prospects. They’re just a route they can take to blame the coach, again, for whatever. Those players aren’t the story because they don’t make themselves the story when it’s game time. That’s on them. If the players want to be the story, be it. Gaudreau was. Tkachuk was. Kylington was.
Sutter came in and turned things around for a lot of players and helped them achieve career years. Treliving switches the players around, and now it’s Sutter’s fault that the new ones aren’t doing good? The same coach who came in and helped guys get better? Bennett, Gaudreau, Monahan, Gudbranson… these were Sutter guys, and they keep getting traded or shown the door. Guys like Lindholm, Zadorov, Kylington, Tanev, Mangiapane… all guys who have reached new levels with Sutter, and there are more. But Huberdeau plays poorly and Pelletier and Phillips do nothing with their ice time and Sutter is actually bad for players?
Don’t buy it.
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I do think there's a cyclical nature to it, though. Kylington got that opportunity, he forced the issue, good for him. But part of the deal is you also have to ease guys along. You can't wait for every prospect to be as impactful as Gaudreau or Tkachuk right away or you won't promote anybody of note.
Also, I think another aspect that really needs to be litigated is how many of those guys you listed are taking big steps back this year despite the same head coach being at the helm. I give Sutter a fair amount of credit for last year but there's also something to be said for Tkachuk and Gaudreau patching a lot of holes in this team with their electrifying offence. Sutter put that combo together, credit to him. But how many of those career years were bolstered by Tkachuk and Gaudreau, who are no longer here? To what extent was Sutter elevated to the Jack Adams by that duo, and why hasn't he been able to identify a single impactful line combo with the star forward the team acquired to replace them? Sure, Huberdeau deserves (and has received) some scorn, but we're also looking at a situation where the head coach has settled for putting Huberdeau on a line with a fourth-line grinder with four goals in the last calendar year. Not optimal.
There are legitimate, nuanced questions to ask. And I think the reality with this entire conversation lies between the two extremes. A large segment of this thread reminds me of
this meme, with folks taking any and all criticism of Darryl seemingly personally (also harkens back to the off-the-wall "defamation" thread a few weeks back). But it's also a little presumptuous to extrapolate all of this hand-wringing to the Coronato situation or to an exercise in psychoanalysis.