Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
WTF??? A weak roster?
Turned a Vezina candidate into pumpkin. Markstrom admitted his head was not in the right space and Sutter continued to ride him and destroy what confidence he had left.
Turned a 115 point top of the heap LW into a 60 point RW who struggled with the dump and chase game. One of the best east-west players in the game was sledgehammered into a north-south game and the results were obvious. Huberdeau has said all the right things about the coach but another season in the same situation is going to generate similar results.
Took a heart and soul player for the previous Stanley Cup winner and turned him into a divisive player who ended up quitting down the stretch. Kadri is a dick and hates to lose, a quality supposedly everyone wants on the team. But the game became so frustrating and so devoid of joy the guy mailed it down the stretch.
Took a 35 goal scorer and turned him into an other pumpkin, MIA most of the season. Unless Mangiapane did his shoulder in the pre-season and didn't say anything all year there is more than injury here. Every aspect of Mangiapane's game was #### and little was done to help him find his way.
Took one of the top centers in the game, a 40 goal scorer, and misused him all season long, never giving him opportunity to do what he does best and draining all of the joy from the game to where he doesn't want to come back. The loss of Lindholm is going to haunt this team as there is no one in the system that fill that gap.
Took the latest version of Mr. Calgary Flame, the guy a lot of this board wanted to be captain, and has made it to where he doesn't want to come back. Backlund's garbage day interview was the most difficult to hear because so many thought he would be a Flame for life, but instead he wants to move on to greener pastures.
And so on and so on. Won't touch on the defense that turned into a sieve or the young guys that showed promise only to sit in the pressbox. The only guys that performed well were interested in coming back were the guys who won a cup with him in Los Angeles - a DECADE ago.
This WAS a Darryl Sutter team and it performed like a Darryl Sutter team. The results were consistent because he never adjusted anything. This is all on Sutter. He took a team many writers were suggesting had the potential to be a Stanley Cup contender and turned them into wallflower at the NHL dance. This is on him. PERIOD.
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Markstrom has had an inconsistent career before last season and was great under Sutter the year before blaming Sutter for his fall off without any actual reason is pretty weak.
115 winger was his peak performance not what should be expected from him but it sounds better when trying to crap on Sutter. That said even from his expected 80-90 career production Hubredeau clearly had a down year. How much that is due to Sutter is certainly up for debate. There isn't a single player, let alone two to make up a line, that ever fit with Hubredeau which is the fault of the GM who did a terrible job of team building and having players that fit together or made sense. Sutter did the best he could with a mish mash of meh forwards and Hubredeau didn't help by spending more time sulking than working on figuring out how he could fit into a new situation.
Kadri falling off was clear to everyone which is why he was available so late into the FA period because teams knew not to give him the stupid contract he was demanding. Blaming Sutter for Kadri being lazy is silly. That is on Kadri.
Mangiapane is a streaky player that can put up good stats then do nothing for long periods because he is more heart than skill. Throw in the injury and his season is not that surprising.
This is a team with a roster that should have finished somewhere between 6th-10th in the West, they finished 9th so near the bottom of expectations which is why I have no problem if the team moves on from Sutter, but to pretend that the issue is the coaching not the terrible roster construction is just blind homerism at its finest. This team has major roster issues from both the actual talent they have and how that talent works with each other.
Personally I think that the solution is to move on from Sutter and make major roster adjustments but if the team is only going to do one of those things changes to the roster is much more important than just changing the coach and hoping the next guy can get more out of these players than they have to give.