Even if you don't blame Sutter at all for Gaudreau and Tkachuk leaving, it's a real problem the way he treats young defensemen.
Valimaki was a serious loss for the organization. A first round pick that is now playing at a borderline star level for another team after being lost on waivers of all things. Sure, he stunk up the joint and a lot of us understood why they favored Mackey over him at the time, but a coach should be able to get a read on a player's potential and management should know better than to let a promising defenseman go on waivers just because a coach doesn't like how he's playing.
But management didn't know better. And we know they didn't know better because they did the same thing two years earlier with Oliver Kylington. He played 38 games for Peters on a team that came in 2nd in the league and then the next year Sutter played him a total of eight games on a bubble team that missed the playoffs. The Flames put him on waivers and also exposed him in the expansion draft. They are actually fortunate that they only lost one top 4 defenseman under 25 years old on account of Sutter's coaching and management's inability to intervene.
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