[Erick Estrada]

Duhatschek with a rare scathing article on the Flames. He takes shots at Sutter and Edwards.

https://theathletic.com/4421547/2023...darryl-sutter/

That’s how you lose a league-high 30 one-goal games. Sutter is a crafty contrarian and has been his entire coaching life. That will never change. The Flames clearly needed a spark. Potentially, they could have gotten it from any of those young players. But Sutter’s playbook rarely varies — he prefers the safe, low-risk veteran path.

This – a year out of the playoffs, after a 111-point season the year before — was the predictable outcome. Because this is what safe gets you. Safe gets you close. But this year, it also had you always chasing. And chasing games consistently night in and night out wears on a team mentally. It isn’t a winning strategy in the long run. And so on Monday, when the dust had finally settled a little and the page turned to next year, the first casualty was general manager Brad Treliving.

Until there’s a new GM in place, it’s impossible to know if they’re going to act decisively and change personnel in a meaningful way — or if they will rely on a series of half measures, which has been the organizational way ever since Murray Edwards took control of the ownership group. Philosophically, the history of the Flames organization is the following: It’s all about patching and plugging, on the grounds that the bad years aren’t — deep down — as bad as they look. And if you can just fix the overtime record and get the goaltending back to where it was a year ago, then maybe you can get by with just a tweak.

The net result is you can have a bad season followed by a good season, and go on that way endlessly. But you never really come close, because you never get those core pieces — those Connor McDavids, those Connor Bedards — that can change the course of your franchise in a heartbeat. The Flames haven’t come close for a long time — 2004, when they lost in the Stanley Cup Final to Tampa Bay. So, they’re at a crossroads.

Flames are fortunate to be served softballs by the local media so it's refreshing to see at least someone in the media calling out Edwards for what he's created.