Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
Looking purely just at his moves and drafting then I think Treliving would take this over Sutter.
But when you consider the impact that Sutter had on the organization (revitalizing the franchise, taking a team to the stanley cup finals, starting our farm system, etc) you have to push him ahead of Treliving from that perspective.
Edit: I can kind of see having Treliving ahead of Sutter, but having Coates ahead of Sutter is ridiculous. I get the economy was a struggle but he pretty much was the architect of the team that didn't make the playoffs for 7 years in the 90s.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with people saying Coates. 8 out of his 40 draft picks played for the Flames. He had two 6th overall picks and they turned into Rico Fata and Daniel Tkachuk. Plus the team that he managed never made the playoffs (Outside of taking over mid-season his first year).
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Fata I will grant you was a mis-step, but Tkaczuk was nobody's fault. He was on track to be a strong top 6 forward until his injuries. Can't predict that happening.
Coates may not have had the team in the playoffs, but he was bargain bin shopping, and even so, the team was at least competitive the whole time. And yes, the young guns were underwhelming, but there was a clear purpose to the building. Many of those young players worked out and became great NHLers, some became mediocre ones, and others flat out busted. That happens in any rebuild, which is definitely was. He laid a framework for Button to build on, and then Button fumbled the ball, badly. So much so that Sutter was brought in to rescue the franchise, which he definitely did for the first few years, and then eventually lost the plot.
At any rate, Coates may not have been our best GM, which is evident from the poll, but he also didn't make any terrible errors. I consider him a very strong "caretaker" GM who wasn't given the resources to really improve the team. Even so, he did everything short of trading for or signing a superstar to get the team in the playoffs, and he would never be given permission to do so from the ownership group at the time. I see strong positives in his tenure, with little that he did wrong (no GM is perfect). He had the worst possible time to be a GM for the Flames, and handled the circumstances well. That's all you could ask of him.