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Originally Posted by bubbsy
what does that mean?
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People always assume that Darryl Sutter chose the big tough western Canadian kids with limited upside. However, if you look back through his draft history, he took Russians and even soft, skilled players - they just didn't pan out.
What started evolving during Sutter's regime was a philosophy about what the Flames should be targeting in prospects - Character and IQ came out as the two most important traits at the time. Todd Button talked about how the 2008 draft was the big turn-around in the organizational philosophy regarding prospects and drafting in general, and I think we can all agree that things did start improving.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
Didn't they also simply hire more scouts?
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Yep, there weren't many scouts at all when Sutter took over. He convinced the Flames to once again invest in their own AHL franchise to better control development of their prospects, as well as starting to expand the scouting staff.
People assume this expansion and philosophical change only happened under Feaster, and give all the credit to Feaster, when in fact Sutter was the one (or at least under his watch, which IMO is the same thing) who initiated these changes. Feaster definitely took the ball and ran with it, adding/tinkering with the existing scouting staff, but Darryl just gets thrown under the bus.
Yep, I think Darryl took too long to make changes - that's on him - but the changes were being made and the same traits that the Flames identify as necessities in prospects came about under Darryl's tenure.
I would seriously love to pick Todd Button's brain and ask him what changes were implemented at what times in his long tenure with the Flames, and what mandates were given to the scouting staff by the GM. We don't know all the answers for sure, but Todd was fairly forthcoming during an interview (Herald? Sun? I can't remember now) that things changed in 2008.
