Quote:
Originally Posted by Ferarri
Well that may be true, there was no need for Burke to publicly call him out the way he did. I'm sure his intentions were to light a fire, but not everyone responds well to that type of open criticism. A lot of these conversations could have happened behind closed doors.
It seemed like from the very get-go that there were going to be problems as Sven didn't fit the mold of 'truculence.' Ultimately it worked out well for the Flames, but it could have been handled better by management.
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You are assuming that nobody spoke to Baertschi up until his presser, which I would be shocked with. Baertschi was just extremely lazy. I specifically posted about how much he was sticking out like sore thumb on that team with everyone else working so hard and skating so hard while Baertschi just seemed to be floating, and got ripped for it at the time. I can't remember the last time I saw a prospect compete less, or skate less hard than Baertschi did. Gaudreau fit onto the 'truculent' team just fine the next season. Monahan was never truculent. Brodie was never truculent. These were all favourites of Hartley, and it was Hartley that got rid of truculent players McGrattan and Sarich.
In the presser, Burke didn't bring up truculence. He brought up the phrases "lack of compete" and "skates hard only in one zone, and even then not consistently". I also don't think Burke ripped him that hard - he was asked about it, and he gave his opinion. Feaster was forcing Baertschi into the lineup, and the instant that Feaster was fired, Baertschi was demoted. One can imagine that there were many conversations between Hartley (and/or the assistants) with the lack of effort by Baertschi before being ripped publicly, so I doubt this would have been the first attempt at getting something through to Baertschi.