Quote:
Originally Posted by tvp2003
From the Friedman article:
The Flames had factions this year, which included player-versus-player. That happens when your season doesn’t go how you wanted or expected. The priority must be injecting youth into the roster and making Jonathan Huberdeau work. Some of that is on the player, but it’s also on the environment around him.
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This is honestly what I understood from the garbage day interviews. There were likely two factions
1) Some star players didn't mesh with Sutter
2) Other long-term players didn't mesh with the star players that didn't like Sutter
- Kadri spoke of disagreements with coach AND players.
- Huby spoke of needing to be better and adjust to the system and went of his way to say "we both need to be better." No one who has the clear high ground would say that.
- Weegar walked the line between best friend on one side and the other faction on the other.
- The look between Coleman and Lewis before Lewis answered the question.
- Backlund specifically talking about wanting to win and not sure if he could do that here was possibly an indirect shot a Huby and/or Kadri
- Lindholm saying lets see, but taking the same tact as Backlund
- Zadorov and Hannifin and Toffoli saying how much they like it here
There will be spin from the Treliving camp and the Huby/Kadri camp, especially through guys like Alan Walsh who leak stuff through the media. But there's another side to this story. If there wasn't, Sutter would have been gone already.
If the problem is Kadri and Huby, there was zero chance Tre was going to do anything to address it. It would have skewered his reputation with players to move guys months after signing them to a long-term deal. But a new GM? A new GM can do that.
Huby to me seems like it could be a Chris Drury situation. Sutter's first move as GM was to trade Drury - a sulking, moody player who didn't want to be here - somewhere else.