Who is better at drafting - Darryl Sutter, or a hat?

[CliffFletcher]

There's a reason there was zero interest around in the NHL in hiring Darryl for a management role after his stint with the Flames. The guy is a very good coach and a very bad GM.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

The original of this concept will forever be the greatest.

http://www.pensionplanpuppets.com/20...-for-beginners

That's fantastic. But it makes me mad to be reminded that the Oilers came so close to signing Clarkson.

[Hackey]

Originally Posted by activeStick

Darryl Sutter the coach is awesome. He seems to have mastered the craft of motivating players and leading them to high performance.

Darryl Sutter the GM is quite the opposite and he's pretty bad at it overall.

Bad GM? Sutter made some of the best trades in team history. I think Treliving is a lot better but he does deserve some credit. He made some really solid moves that got this organization the only real playoff hockey its seen in the last 20 years.

[calgaryblood]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

Really?

Not even Treliving?

Way too early to judge Treliving. Usually GMs can't be judged for about 5 years.

[TheScorpion]

Originally Posted by calgaryblood

Way too early to judge Treliving. Usually GMs can't be judged for about 5 years.

OK, sure.

How about Feaster? He was instrumental in assembling some of the pieces which pushed the Flames into the second round in 2015. He hit the Cammalleri trade out of the park.

[Erick Estrada]

Darryl made a few decent trades and it seemed he had a much better eye for pro talent than amateur talent. I think it's hard for a guy that spent most of his life either playing pro or coaching pro's to simply be able to jump into scouting junior players and make big draft decisions on behalf of the team. He likely would have fared much better with a Jay Feaster hands off approach at the draft while focussing more on the trade part of the job.

[Five-hole]

Originally Posted by Hackey

Bad GM? Sutter made some of the best trades in team history. I think Treliving is a lot better but he does deserve some credit. He made some really solid moves that got this organization the only real playoff hockey its seen in the last 20 years.

He also made some of the worst:

Phaneuf
Jokinen
Jokinen v2
Wayne Primeau
Brad Stuart
Stralman for a 3rd
Lydman for a 3rd

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

OK, sure.

How about Feaster? He was instrumental in assembling some of the pieces which pushed the Flames into the second round in 2015. He hit the Cammalleri trade out of the park.

Out of the park?

If we are going to criticise Sutter for trading away 2nd rounders when the Flames were a playoff team then Feaster should be criticised for trading away a 2nd rounder when they should have been rebuilding.

Cammalleri was the worst asset management in Flames history.

[activeStick]

Originally Posted by Hackey

Bad GM? Sutter made some of the best trades in team history. I think Treliving is a lot better but he does deserve some credit. He made some really solid moves that got this organization the only real playoff hockey its seen in the last 20 years.

He's made some good ones and some bad ones I agree. Overall, I'd say Sutter was a bad GM.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

He also made some of the worst:

Phaneuf
Jokinen
Jokinen v2
Wayne Primeau
Brad Stuart
Stralman for a 3rd
Lydman for a 3rd

Those trades are not fair at all to judge Darryl on. If Jokinen was the player everyone thought he still was (a 90pt first line centre) that was a slam dunk win. No one but Jokinen should be blamed that he turned out completely different. I still remember on trade deadline day Bob Mackenze saying "The Calgary Flames finally have their first line centre".

Brad Stuart's trade was unfortunate for how it turned out. Losing Ference hurt, but it was the right gamble at the time. We gained a top 2 defenseman for the stretch run who played very well, unfortunately he wanted to go UFA. If we had been able to sign Stuart, who knows what would have happened.

Stralman was barely an NHL player at that point, I think we were lucky to get a 3rd for him. He was a longshot to even be an NHL regular, let alone one of the premier defensemen in this league.

Darryl's trades 2010 onwards are where the majority of his fairly deserved criticism comes from. But from 2004-2009 the man could almost do no wrong.

[calgarywinning]

Primarily a stop-gap GM. Clearly we had elements of a successful team but not a rising core of youth to back up vets during his tenure as GM.

This is the classic case of a great Chef that knows how to run a kitchen and make awesome food become a restaurant owner that is terrible at business.

Great coach and hockey mind in that aspect. Also, I think it's fickle. Little to the left and little to the right, some luck, some chemistry, some bad luck, no chemistry.

[CliffFletcher]

Trades are maybe the third most important GM skill. Drafting/development and cap management are higher. General management - hiring coaches, surrounding yourself with smart people, fostering a positive working environment - is right up there too. And Sutter was bad at all those things.

[Wolfman]

Originally Posted by Mister Yamoto

When Darryl Sutter got here the Flames had the smallest scouting staff in the NHL and they didn't even have an AHL team. The Flames were known as the cheapest team in the NHL. Hardly an ideal situation for drafting and development.

And I also get a chuckle about how people criticize him for trading all those 2nds. He won those trades by miles. Mikka Kiprusoff alone is worth 20 2nd round draft picks. And the only two 2nd that he used yielded Tim Ramholt and Mitch Wahl. Really it's a strong argument for trading your 2nd every year.

I'll take Darryl over a hat. Actually I'll take Darryl over every GM the Flames have had excluding Fletcher.

Nah, you're kidding right?!

[Five-hole]

Originally Posted by Cole436

Those trades are not fair at all to judge Darryl on. If Jokinen was the player everyone thought he still was (a 90pt first line centre) that was a slam dunk win. No one but Jokinen should be blamed that he turned out completely different. I still remember on trade deadline day Bob Mackenze saying "The Calgary Flames finally have their first line centre".

Brad Stuart's trade was unfortunate for how it turned out. Losing Ference hurt, but it was the right gamble at the time. We gained a top 2 defenseman for the stretch run who played very well, unfortunately he wanted to go UFA. If we had been able to sign Stuart, who knows what would have happened.

Stralman was barely an NHL player at that point, I think we were lucky to get a 3rd for him. He was a longshot to even be an NHL regular, let alone one of the premier defensemen in this league.

Darryl's trades 2010 onwards are where the majority of his fairly deserved criticism comes from. But from 2004-2009 the man could almost do no wrong.

Jokinen went from a 91 point, +18 player to a 71 point, -19 player who was traded by Florida. Phoenix dumped him after 57 games. He wasn't the most popular player in the dressing room. He had zero ability to use his linemates, and we were ostensibly getting him to play with Iginla. He played in an uber-weak division, couldn't get his team anywhere near the playoffs, and had never played in a meaningful game in the NHL, much less in the playoffs. Some said the Zednik incident changed him forever -- he certainly was a shell of the player we thought we were getting.

That Brad Stuart wanted to sign in California was the worst kept secret in the NHL. We traded a lynchpin in our dressing room and a player in Kobasew who went on to have back-to-back 20-20-40 seasons and was pretty serviceable (until he ran into injury trouble) for a guy who didn't want to sign here and a guy we ended up having to pay a 2nd round pick just to get rid of (Wayne Primeau). This trade was bleepin' awful.

What do both of those have in common? A failure by Sutter (and/or his pro scouts) to do their due diligence on these guys.

I might give you Stralman, but he looked like a good young defenseman who was traded "as a favor to him" because he wanted more playing time than he'd get on our third pair, IIRC. Yeah, that he'd become a top-pairing D-man was unlikely at that point, but it was a good young asset given away for pretty much zilch.

[Cole436]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

Jokinen went from a 91 point, +18 player to a 71 point, -19 player who was traded by Florida. Phoenix dumped him after 57 games. He wasn't the most popular player in the dressing room. He had zero ability to use his linemates, and we were ostensibly getting him to play with Iginla. He played in an uber-weak division, couldn't get his team anywhere near the playoffs, and had never played in a meaningful game in the NHL, much less in the playoffs. Some said the Zednik incident changed him forever -- he certainly was a shell of the player we thought we were getting.

That Brad Stuart wanted to sign in California was the worst kept secret in the NHL. We traded a lynchpin in our dressing room and a player in Kobasew who went on to have back-to-back 20-20-40 seasons and was pretty serviceable (until he ran into injury trouble) for a guy who didn't want to sign here and a guy we ended up having to pay a 2nd round pick just to get rid of (Wayne Primeau). This trade was bleepin' awful.

What do both of those have in common? A failure by Sutter (and/or his pro scouts) to do their due diligence on these guys.

I might give you Stralman, but he looked like a good young defenseman who was traded "as a favor to him" because he wanted more playing time than he'd get on our third pair, IIRC. Yeah, that he'd become a top-pairing D-man was unlikely at that point, but it was a good young asset given away for pretty much zilch.

We'll have to disagree about Jokinen. He had just come off back to back 90 point years (well 89 the one year), you don't score those sort of points without using your teammates. He and had a down year at 71 points and that's not uncommon for star players. Even Iginla had a few below PPG years in his prime. Pheonix was a garbage team and Jokinen still finished 2nd in team scoring despite only playing 57 games for them the whole year. We had the opportunity to snag a #1 centre at the trade deadline, a need this team has had for years. At the time, it was a reasonable gamble that a 30 year old #1 centre in his prime would rebound to his historical play, and not fall off a cliff. I don't put that on Darryl, that falls 100% on Jokinen.

The Stuart trade was a big risk which bit us hard, but that's the price you pay for trying to win. Do I wish the trade wasn't made in hindsight? Of course. You can't replace a guy like Andrew Ference, especially with one who didn't want to be here. But Stuart was 100% a better hockey player than Ference and he gave us a better chance of winning that year than Andrew Ference. It's one of those trades that if they work out, you look like a genius, and if it doesn't you can't find a hole deep enough to hide in.

[Freeway]

The one Sutter story I can recall from his years as a GM, and I forget who originally told me this: the Flames drafted Matt Pelech in 2005 because Darryl wanted a replacement for Rhett Warrener in the pipeline.

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

Out of the park?

If we are going to criticise Sutter for trading away 2nd rounders when the Flames were a playoff team then Feaster should be criticised for trading away a 2nd rounder when they should have been rebuilding.

Cammalleri was the worst asset management in Flames history.

The worst asset management in Flames history? Really?
How about Marc Savard as a starting point.

[JD]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

The worst asset management in Flames history? Really?
How about Marc Savard as a starting point.

Haha yeah, I was just gonna point that one out. Ironic considering his username.

There are plenty of terrible examples of asset management in the Flames' annals of history. Unfortunately.

[drewtastic]

Agree with those saying Sutter's coaching skills far outweighed his GM-ing skills: drafting, trading, or FA-signing.

Tony Amonte hit a lot of posts...a lot of posts...

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by Freeway

The one Sutter story I can recall from his years as a GM, and I forget who originally told me this: the Flames drafted Matt Pelech in 2005 because Darryl wanted a replacement for Rhett Warrener in the pipeline.

I heard the exact same story. Just like you I couldn't remember where though, it was at least 6-8 years ago.