[News] Darryl Sutter was a master motivator

[Dion]

10 years later - Flames players talk how Sutter motivated his team

“(Those letters were) huge — 4-0. SWEEP,” says Craig Conroy. “He’s like, ‘We’re already swept, guys. I guess we should just go home.’ He made a little joke. But he was serious.”

Point made, Sutter places the offending broadsheet on a shelf.

“No one threw the paper away,” says Conroy. “It just sat there.”

Hours later, the Calgary Flames return to the dressing room, 2-1 victors at Joe Louis Arena. Sutter marches back in, snatches the newspaper.

“He says, ‘You know how much this is worth?’ and he threw it in the garbage,” says Conroy. “He said, ‘They don’t just get to win four in a row. We can beat these guys.’ We were like, ‘You know what? He’s right.’ The more we won, the more we believed.”

“I couldn’t care less about his GM-ing,” says Warrener. “It was his ability to walk through the dressing room and know exactly what the mood of the team was — that was his greatest asset. He could walk in the room and, after two seconds, he would know whether it was, ‘OK, time to kick them in the pants,’ or time to have (Rich Preston) come in and tell a joke or time to give them the day off. He had that uncanny ability to know exactly what we needed.”

According to David Marcoux: “Darryl is telling our young guys (like Kobasew and Lombardi), ‘Listen, if you want Steve Yzerman’s autograph, if you want Chris Chelios’s autograph, just win the damn series and I’ll get Steve Yzerman’s autograph for you, Lombo.’ Guys are looking at Darryl like he had four eyes.”

Ask Commodore, whose nose was broken by a Patrick Marleau check. The red-headed defender, with tears and blood streaming down his face, gutted out the shift, then wobbled off the ice.

“Darryl just gave it to me on the bench,” says Commodore. “I’m thinking, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m a mess here. I can barely see you.’ But I didn’t say anything. I remember being pissed off. My attitude was, ‘You don’t like how that went? I’ll show you.’ I shook off the broken nose and went from there.”

“Craig exploded and started screaming at Darryl,” he says. “Connie was riled — I thought his head was going to explode. Then Darryl started clapping and said, ‘Here we go.’ And out of the dressing room (we went).

“I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ But we won the game.”

“Some coaches that are on you all the time . . . have favourites,” Clark says. “But if a coach is hard on the No. 1 guy all the way to the No. 25 guy? That’s getting the most out of everybody. That’s the way Darryl was. He was just as hard on Iggy as he was on me.”

http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/...198/story.html

[flamesfan1297]

I liked daryl as a coach

[Gaskal]

Lol the one with the autographs was awesome. Miss the Darrylisms.

[Freeway]

Darryl's one of the most entertaining interview subjects ever.

[schteve_d]

It's really too bad that the GM thing came about. Darryl Sutter is a phenomenal coach.

[Cleveland Steam Whistle]

I've said it before, Darryl wasn't half bad as a GM, when he was picking players for himself. As a GM he really failed at getting on the same page as his coach, or getting his coach the tools he wanted, or picking the right coach for the team he assembled, or some combination of all of the above.

Clearly a better coach than GM, but he was decent at both when he was putting together a team for himself.

[Where ru Chris O'Sullivan]

Originally Posted by Cleveland Steam Whistle

I've said it before, Darryl wasn't half bad as a GM, when he was picking players for himself. As a GM he really failed at getting on the same page as his coach, or getting his coach the tools he wanted, or picking the right coach for the team he assembled, or some combination of all of the above.

Clearly a better coach than GM, but he was decent at both when he was putting together a team for himself.

That was exactly the problem, Daryl isn't dumb, he knows the players he put in the dressing room for Keenan / Brent weren't achieving to the levels of expectation.

Would have been nice to see him fire Brent and have the chance to be GM / Coach (before the rebuild) I think they had a chance to make the playoffs and who knows.

[Northendzone]

Article, unfortunately, is remiss in not detailing jar ones play in game 7 v Canucks......

Wonder Daryl was similar with the Kings in their run to the cup a few years back?

[dying4acup]

@excitingdarrylsutter?

[FlameZilla]

His inaudible sound bites on the radio make it hard to imagine what he would be like in the dressing room. You can see it in his eyes that he could be crackers.

Darryl is the best coach we had in the last 25 years. Shame we didn't get a few more years out or him as coach.

[bubbsy]

He was a magician with this team as its coach. Man i wish that team won the cup, that was the most fun i've had as a sports fan in my life, and am just waiting for the team to catch fire again soon.

[Huntingwhale]

I'll always love Sutter and have nothing but respect for him. Maybe I'm alone in thinking this, but other then a few days when he forgot to take his meds, he was a pretty darn good GM for the most part. I think the trades he lost badly on were trades he made simply because he wanted to win so bad.

I wish he stayed as coach longer then he did. 3 seasons was nowhere near long enough for him.

[FAN]

The thread title should read Darryl was and is a master motivator. It is nice to read up on Darryl during the Cup run but there was really never a doubt as to what Darryl's strengths were. He wasn't known as an X or O guy. It wasn't all about his system. It was about the players showing up to play hockey the right way, which was with heart, soul, and grit.

[BigRed]

WHat can I say? I miss the guy, despite it all. Only reason I like Burke is because he seems to be cut from the same cloth.

Wouldn't mind seeing Burke as GM and Sutter as coach. But they'd probably kill each other.

[GreenLantern]

All the players who came and went that year, all seem to respect what he did as a coach.

I would love to see a chart of the healthy players we had in that run, showing who was out from the start, who went down as the series' progressed and who stayed healthy through out.

If memory serves me correctly that team was pretty beat up by game 7.

[Burke Salad]

Nobody could understand a word he said, so they gave full effort to stave off those uncomfortable conversations.

[BigRed]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

If memory serves me correctly that team was pretty beat up by game 7.

I think it was later revealed that Regehr played the whole SCF with a fractured ankle. Lydman had been out since round 1 with a concussion and got thrown into game 7 cold. Donovan's knee had been destroyed, Lombardi was out with a concussion, McAmmond missed the whole playoffs.

Pretty sure there was some other stuff too. Commodore and Montador were 7th and 8th D and they played the whole run so someone else had to be out as well.

[BigRed]

Yelle, Gauthier and Simon were out by the end as well. Gauthier was hurt in game 6 vs. Vancouver.

[1stLand]

These threads depress me.

[liamenator]

It would have been interesting if the Flames had renewed Craig Button's contract in 2003 and kept him in place to help Darryl take care of the details, as he had been doing since hiring DS in December 2002. The result would have been an arrangement similar to what Colorado has with Sherman and Roy (though obviously without the Sakic role). Button showed early on a willingness to work with and cater to his coach's suggestions, e.g. the Donovan and Ference trades. No reason to believe he wouldn't have agreed to a new arrangement with Darryl as a kind of co-GM, if it meant he could keep his job.

We'll never know, but I think Button and Darryl might've complemented each other well for a while. Neither were great GMs on their own, clearly. Each had their own strengths--Button had a reasonably good eye for young talent, even if it showed through trades and free agent signings more than at the draft table. Darryl lacked any kind of long term vision and, though he struck gold early, really hit the skids the more consolidated power. It would have been worth trying if only because it would have kept DS behind the bench indefinitely.