[News] Cliff Fletcher’s outside-the-box thinking made him one of the best of the era

[Dion]

Cliff talks about building a winning franchise in the 80's

“When we arrived from Atlanta,” he’s reminiscing that night in Phoenix, “we knew there was juggernaut emerging 180 miles north of us. The first year, if you’ll remember, we had a pretty damned good year, only lost five games in the Corral because the boards were so high the other team didn’t know how to get over them.

“We won a couple rounds of the playoffs that year, Chicago and then Philly. The next year, when we lost the first round of the playoff to Vancouver, you could see there were big issues looming ahead of us. We had to make changes. That takes time.

“The night we won the Cup, it wasn’t just about that game or that series or that playoff run. It was about building something, all the sleepless nights trying to catch the Oilers, finding ways to improve.”

“Trading Hull … we knew what we were doing when we did it. I think,” laughs Fletcher. “I said then, when we made the deal, that he’d score 150 goals the next three years. Turns out, he got 160.

“But we got Wamsley, who was very important to the group and we got Ramage and if you remember back Gary Suter got hurt in the first round and Ramage had a helluva playoff. At the time we had three right wingers who had scored 50 goals — Lanny, Hakan Loob and Joey Mullen. So I felt I could do it.

Among the best of an era. Known as the ‘Silver Fox’ or ‘Trader Cliff’, he was someone who thought outside the box. Under his auspices, the Flames began scouring the U.S. colleges, a largely untapped treasure trove at the time, and came away with Joel Otto, Colin Patterson, Jamie Macoun and Gary Suter. They headed over to Europe and brought back, among other jewels, Hakan Loob and Kent Nilsson.

And then there were the trades. Fletcher’s forte. For Lanny McDonald. Joe Mullen. Doug Gilmour. Brad McCrimmon. Dana Murzyn. Rob Ramage. Ric Nattress. And on, and on.

“I think bringing in Bob Johnson was a very important part of it, saw us develop into a very competitive hockey team. And when you look back at the job our scouting department did ... amazing. The earliest we ever picked was 10th or 11th, and that turned into Gary Roberts. But to get Roberts and MacInnis in the first round, Nieuwendyk and Vernon in the second, Hunter in the third, Peplinski in the fourth, Brett Hull in the sixth, Hakan Loob, Suter and Fleury in the eighth and ninth rounds. I mean our scouting department did one helluva job.

“We had good continuity and stability. I’m disappointed we only won one Cup, I think everyone involved at that time has that regret now, looking back, but we won two Presidents Trophies and over the last six seasons I was there we had the most collective points of any team in the league.”

“You can take all the other stuff, all the other people, that contributed to the success of that club,” says Fletcher’s right-hand man at the time, Al MacNeil, “and put Cliff in another category altogether. He was the design mechanism. His knack for making the right deal? Unequalled. His ability to get you to go out and look for guys, players who would help, and then back you on it? Unequalled. He understood how to delegate but he also knew that the buck stopped with him, so when it came time to make a decision, he made it."

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