Quote:
Originally Posted by Aarongavey
Many say that as an excuse for Treliving. My point is I believe that Treliving never wanted to rebuild and with the exception of the hire of Sutter he did what he wanted to on the hockey operations side. For Murray to be some overbearing meddling owner he sure took a long time to get his preferred coach in the seat.
The Flames are not forced into anything, they could have spent a bunch of money this offseason and built a bubble team but they did not. Because ownership accepts the direction and advice of the GM.
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The Flames first approached Sutter after Peters went away and Sutter said he wasn’t ready/interested at that time. Ward was put in place then the pandemic hit and given there were no fans buying tickets I bet Edwards/ownership wasn’t terribly interested in hiring an expensive coach. I also suspect the flames circled back to Sutter after the season to which Sutter gave it some thought. That would explain why it took the Flames 3-4 weeks to officially give Ward the job. Finally Sutter agreed to join the team at the tail end of the pandemic (or at least the restrictions were starting to lift).
The Flames not spending money this year goes hand in hand with several things:
A) as discussed, the Flames rebuild has been dictated by several players wanting out, or ‘quiet quitting’ ie making unrealistic contract demands (Lindholm specifically)
B) construction of the new arena and green line making accessing the dome not too practical, ticket sales will be down.
C) no identifiable face of the franchise type player to drive ticket sales/interest.
Rebuilding may not have been ‘forced’ but there sure were several very compelling reasons to do so