Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
This is such a frustrating thing to hear from Sutter. It is his job as the coach to come up with a game plan to counter Nathan MacKinnon or any other superstar player. It is his job to make in game adjustments to solve the other team. We see none of this from Sutter. He's always been a work-harder-not-smarter type of coach and rolls the same lines out there to play the exact same boring as #### style the team is expecting and knows how to defend.
This is a different game now and you need to take what the other team is giving you, and every team gives you something different. It's why the Avalanche are Stanley Cup champions, they adapted best to each team they were playing. It is also why the Flames got absolutely destroyed by two players in the playoffs last spring. Sutter had no answers for them and they had a field day against the Mickey Mouse systems that Sutter had the Flames play. The only thing that came out of that humiliating loss was a broken Jacob Markstrom. That was on Sutter and his refusal to adjust. The game has passed him by. You can't win in this league by trying to knock your square peg into a round hole with a sledgehammer. It just doesn't work anymore.
Talent isn't "dropped in your lap" when you finish that high. You have to work for it. You have to commit to being bad enough to be in a position to get these picks. The Flames have never been that way. They have fought this tried and true mechanism and have instead worked towards mediocrity. Once you get it through your head how bad your organization is you should accept that you have to burn the ships and commit to going for that elite talent.
The Flames have been very lucky and did have a core player "drop into their lap" when Vancouver made the bonehead move of not selecting Tkachuk and going with Olli Juolevi, so it has happened for the Flames.
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It sort of is what it is though. Under Gulutzan the Flames averaged 41 wins every 82 games and made the playoffs 1/2 of the time.
Under Sutter the Flames up until last night have averaged 44 wins every 82 games and will have made the playoffs 1/3 of the time.
Tomato tomato. Rinse and repeat.