Sutter is the problem

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Ped

Saw this on Sportsnet this morning:


https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article...matthew-knies/

So TT has the most posts per/60

Not surprised

[Press Level]

The 21-22 Flames were carried by one of the best top lines in franchise history and Vezina-calibre goaltending.
This year, the goaltending was sub-par and 2/3 of the top line were replaced by players who were not as good. Blame the coach all you want, but the reality is that the players are simply not good enough.

The true "villians," (if anyone needs to be villified) are two elite players who did not want to play in Calgary and a goaltender who became a head case for most of the season.

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

Originally Posted by dammage79

I can't agree with this. This storyline fans have been building up all season with Huberdeau sucks. Simple truth is , this is a square peg trying to get shoved into a round hole situation.

This isn't a James Neal situation. His game has never showed warning signs of slowing down and then all of a sudden he drops off the face of the earth?

It doesn't add up. Just doesn't.

What doesn't add up?

A guy never asked to check adjusting to that practice? His entire previous team from has struggled with this. Weegar and Huberdeau here. All of the Panthers still in Florida.

Both have had #### goaltending. The one guy not struggling is Tkachuk who already adjusted thanks to last year and found his happy place of scoring and no fks given as long as his personal stats are good.

There is no problem with pegs and holes. Huberdeau has not been good. Full stop. There is zero evidence to the contrary. It's not like Weegar where you can point to what he has done well and take solace in it. There is nothing. The best part of his year is the box suite he pushes out to kids and families.

[CaptainYooh]

Looking for a scapegoat is always nothing but a witch-hunt. Sutter is not THE problem. Everything is a problem right now with this team. Obvious lack of player leadership is a problem. Obvious lack of elite finishing skill is a problem. Obvious lack of good goaltending is a problem. All these problems must be solved as a team within the team. Sutter is just an easy target.

[ResAlien]

It’s nice to see Huberdeau finally being moved back to LW instead of trying to force him at RW. I genuinely don’t recall, was Sutter the coach that tried to make Tanguay play centre after a career at LW as well? Weird to force it like that

[Yikes]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

Looking for a scapegoat is always nothing but a witch-hunt. Sutter is not THE problem. Everything is a problem right now with this team. Obvious lack of player leadership is a problem. Obvious lack of elite finishing skill is a problem. Obvious lack of good goaltending is a problem. All these problems must be solved as a team within the team. Sutter is just an easy target.

Offer the GM position to Martin St. Louis, I'm sure he would fire Sutter's ass with glee and build the coaching staff ready for the NHL of now and not "once upon a time" or "remember when".

[DylanScores]

Unfortunately todays NHL is not suited for Sutter hockey anymore!
We won’t get a new coach. The owners love Sutter! There will be a power struggle for sure between our players and him. The owners will drag this on as they don’t want to fire and pay him. Our owners would rather do that.
I am not sure why he keeps rolling with Kadri and Huberdeau! They are like oil and water!

[Royle9]

News Flash

The top line last season was not playing the system to a T like it’s expected of our lines this year.

Sutter seemed okay with it because it was working flawlessly but go back and watch how he allowed Johnny and Crew to play to their strengths and play an east/west style.

They were not dump and chase with perimeter low quality shots, they had tons of cross ice puck movement and it worked.

The first 5 or so games this year we played like that, then for some reason Sutter changed the lines and forced all 4 to play this north/south dump and chase and alas we are stuck in boring hockey mode coupled with terrible goaltending.

Let Huberdeau and his line play a pure offensive east/west style and see what happens.

[combustiblefuel]

Originally Posted by Press Level

The 21-22 Flames were carried by one of the best top lines in franchise history and Vezina-calibre goaltending.
This year, the goaltending was sub-par and 2/3 of the top line were replaced by players who were not as good. Blame the coach all you want, but the reality is that the players are simply not good enough.

The true "villians," (if anyone needs to be villified) are two elite players who did not want to play in Calgary and a goaltender who became a head case for most of the season.

It's the coaches job to adjust the play style to his squad. Not jam a square peg in a round hole.

[Flamesfan05]

Originally Posted by SeanCharles

The problem is this organization refuses to build a team the right way. They have no patience and want to cheat the process.

The list of players on the team we have drafted:

Mangiapane
Backlund
Dube
Pelletier
Ruzicka
Andersson

Out of all these players only Andersson is a guy I would say is not a middle of the lineup player, either consistently or at this time.

How many championship teams have 1 top end player on their team that they drafted? Even if you want to cut them some slack and give them Lindholm because he was traded for a top drafted guy in Fox it still isn’t enough. I realize you could argue Hanifin fits in there too but I don’t see him on the same level as he hasn’t shown he can impact the game both offensively and defensively on a consistent basis and you could argue he is currently our 4th best Dman.

Over the last handful of years we have continually signed free agents to too much money and term which is setting us up to be in a tough cap situation next season.

We have brought in the following players who have significant cap hits:

Kadri
Coleman
Neal (Lucic)
Tanev
Zadorov
Markstrom

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying all of these are bad as Tanev and Zadorov are not bad contracts and before this season Markstrom was worth his salary. We have 32yo Kadri for 6 more, 31yo Coleman for 4 more, 33yo Markstrom for 3 more as ones that stick out as potential problems in the near future. Throw in soon to be 30yo’s Huberdeau and Weegar’s 8 more years and you are starting to see a trend.

We are signing a lot of players who have reached their peaks and produced, in some cases at elite levels, on other teams to big dollar and term deals.

These players are needed on teams but they are mostly guys brought in to help push teams that are close over the top. We seem to be stockpiling players of this kind and as they get older their impacts will continue to decrease while their cap hits remain the same.

I am grateful we have an ownership group that is willing to spend to the cap but I just don’t understand why they can’t see the way to build a winner is through the draft.

The core they drafted is gone. Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Monahan, Brodie, Bennett….

Treliving just failed to complement them with right support to win

Now it’s a retool with Huberdeau and Kadri and they are both terrible so far


They Flames drafted some good players, they just didn’t fill out the team properly

[Paulie Walnuts]

Let's not forget that he has also said to the media and fans on many many occasions that we don't have star players or the horsepower to score goals. This has been his message since the start of the season so we have to wire a bunch of shots on net because we don't have any stars that create offence.

So when people talk about negativity and confidence the coach should take full blame because he's set that tone already.

Not only does his style not fit this team it seems like he's not creating the relationships with the players. Just look at Huberdeau comments today moving back to left wing. Drew Doughty said he wasn't a person you could go in and talk too either. So when you create those barriers around you how are you goimg to know how your players feel.

Sutter creates a toxic work environment. Not naming a captain and trying to be the face of the team himself and making yourself unapproachable nets results like what we are seeing.

[McG]

Against the greasers in the playoffs, I never thought that the Beaver outcoached Sutter, but I thought Sutter outcoached himself. It was as if he was too stuck in a groove…like he wouldn’t change. So when the Beav started double shifting Mavi and Pissy, Sutter’s response was to keep rolling lines instead of sending backlund’s line out to check. It meant that the wonder twins were out every other shift against some other line. I pushed it out of my head.

Except that I see it again now. Lines are blendered but it’s still roll 4 lines. Sutter can’t or won’t make tactical decisions in games. We would have lost to the wild if it wasn’t a league challenge; Sutter wasn’t going to challenge. Pp sucks. OT terrible. The players really don’t look like they are happy. Average.

Yeah, Sutter is one of the problems. Treliving too. Absolutely terrible asset management over his tenure here. Playoffs sacrificed for long term gain? Nope. Playoffs delivered at the expense of futures? Nope. Make the playoffs once in a while and lose first round. What vision? Treliving did well on the chucky trade after blowing the gaudreau situation. But Treliving was the one that created the chucky contract issue. Flames drafting has not improved. Development not improving. Wranglers doing well but when does that translate to the rest of the flames. And coaching selection? If Edwards insisted on Sutter, it’s because peters was hired from a list of one from Treliving meeting him with team Canada, gulutzan was a single list hire after a hike on grouse mountain, ward was a promotion when peters left. Why does Treliving walk players to free agency? Average.

Could I or any of us step into these roles? Obviously not. But it’s the same thing over and over and there seems to be no plan, no consistency.

I think hockey operations and the entire coaching staff needs an overhaul.

I posted this elsewhere, but Lombardi for GM and Quenneville for coach.

Flames are an average team with average performances and average outcomes.

I wish and hope that I’m wrong. It makes me sad.

[Toonage]

Darryl saying this team has no game breakers, and people agreeing with that, bothered me.

One of the reasons people were so excited about Kadri on the Flames was because he was just that for Colorado in the playoffs last year.

[HighLifeMan]

Originally Posted by gvitaly

Alright, I'll bite.
[*]Ruzicka isn't a PPG, Sutter only moved him down the lineup after he cooled off on the Lindholm - Toffoli line. He was given opportunities especially with Backlund - Coleman, but I believe he was playing with Huberdeau as well.
[*]It's Ruzicka's play in the defensive zone, and lack of energy that made him sit. .

This is simply false. Adam Ruzicka played in the top nine from November 8th until December 14th. Check his game log. That was a total of 19 games. He scored 17 points during that stretch which LED THE ENTIRE TEAM. Ruzicka produced 8 points in 8 games prior to being being demoted in the lineup so this notion that he was cooling down is also completely wrong. To cap things off, Darryl Sutter shockingly replaced his minutes and spot in the top nine with Milan Lucic who at that time was playing so poorly that he was benched for three games. The coach replaced the teams most productive forward in the lineup for the worst. Adam Ruzicka has not sniffed a top nine role since.

Additionally he has played just five minutes with Huberdeau at even strength, and his defensive metrics place him near the top end of the roster.

The handling of this player has been nothing short of embarrassing.

[Major Major]

Originally Posted by Ped

Saw this on Sportsnet this morning:


https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article...matthew-knies/

This article is a freaking disaster! So Tage Thompson has the most posts but if you count crossbars Petterson has as many. Tyler Toffoli brings up the rear with 3 fewer than those guys, but one more than them if you count crossbars.

Dude, just count crossbars and give a total! It's not really relent what part of the edge of the net you hit!

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Major Major

This article is a freaking disaster! So Tage Thompson has the most posts but if you count crossbars Petterson has as many. Tyler Toffoli brings up the rear with 3 fewer than those guys, but one more than them if you count crossbars.

Dude, just count crossbars and give a total! It's not really relent what part of the edge of the net you hit!

I'll grant that its not crystal clear, but you comprehension is the disaster.

4. Impressive that Tage Thompson is on pace for 53 goals, no doubt.

Even more so when you consider his luck.

No one in the NHL has hit more posts. Thompson has pinged the iron an unlucky 13 times, 14 when you count crossbars.

The NHL’s other top ironmen reads like a list of elite shooters: Elias Pettersson (14 posts/crossbars), MacKinnon (13), McDavid (11), Kyle Connor (11), Nikita Kucherov (11), Steven Stamkos (11), and Tyler Toffoli (11).

The list is clearly combined. Thompson is the lede because the idea is that he could have 60 goals right now if half his irons hit twine.

[Major Major]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

I'll grant that its not crystal clear, but you comprehension is the disaster.



The list is clearly combined. Thompson is the lede because the idea is that he could have 60 goals right now if half his irons hit twine.

I think we both read it wrong and neither of us are a disaster. It's that damn article man. That is wholesale garbage way of trying to list leaders in bars clanked and not to mention him wedging in this old AHL sophomoric nickname for Toffoli. That is cringy AF.

[McG]

I’m not going to give the clicks…but I’m surprised that the focus was on Thompson and not Mavi.

“Look how great Mavi is!1!! So many more goals..the Goat of goats!!1!1”

[Southside403]

Originally Posted by Press Level

The 21-22 Flames were carried by one of the best top lines in franchise history and Vezina-calibre goaltending.
This year, the goaltending was sub-par and 2/3 of the top line were replaced by players who were not as good. Blame the coach all you want, but the reality is that the players are simply not good enough.

The true "villians," (if anyone needs to be villified) are two elite players who did not want to play in Calgary and a goaltender who became a head case for most of the season.

Great post

[Hockey_Ninja]

It really bugs me that Sutter is likely not communicating with the players very well. Huberdeau’s comments today about being happy being back on the left wing are pretty telling