travel_dude

Time to bring in a POHO. We need something to bridge the gap here. Sutter is giving cues to the direction the team is going, yet he has no say in that. He is supposed to win with whatever he is given. He had some pretty snide comments about it, saying he can only play guys on the active roster. Meaning you should ask BT. This has divorce written all over it. If BT is being pushed out by the owners, then they better be getting a POHO to control it. So important a draft coming up and prospects we need to maximize that a change could derail this team even more.

Maybe some of Sutter's comments are valid, but let's not fool ourselves thinking that the entitlement extended to players that suited up for every game available. Has Lucic had games where he should have been benched? How about Gaudreau? Monahan? Tkachuk has a couple of games where he should have sat immediately afterwards. I don't think Dube was ready for top line this season, so that part may be fair. Saying that Boeser had 10 shots and Dube had two penalties is fair, but I didn't realize Backlund and Lucic had no part in that happening. You want Dube to play faster, yet he has never been on a "speed" line. He's had Tkachuk or Lucic. Sometimes Monahan. Maybe if they had a smurf line like Guadreau-Dube-Mangaipane you could see him fly. Or even Gaudreau-Lindholm-Dube. Honestly, it's no surprise that Sutter is doing what he does. Hard on young guys to either break them or get them to the top. It's up to the GM to provide him with the right tools to build a winner. Take away the Nesterov's and Ritchie's and he will have no choice but to play what he has. Perhaps we need a proper POHO to get in between Sutter, BT and the owners. Stop building piecemeal. Come up with a plan.

The only positive thing that occurred today was that Phillips, Yelesin and Poolman were added to the taxi squad. That had to happen for them to be able to play today. Whether it happens or not, is another story.

We have several D that think the game slower. Unfortunately, Valimaki is a victim to that style of play. He second guesses himself. As does Ras, who used to skate a lot more. Our 3rd line is built of defense and transition. You almost always see just Backlund on that transition. Nordstrom is one of the least capable players I have seen in generating offense. He skates well and forchecks, but doesn't do anything with it. Lucic lumbers into the zone and every once in awhile his stick is just right. I've never seen a guy like Ritchie with hands so bad he misplays every puck he touches. Like Bennett, a lot of our players would do better on other teams. Such a mishmash of player types, I am surprised they get assists on goals. The top line is about the only line that works well, and that has two players we may have to trade. Mangiapane is a top 6 player any day, but we can't use him without playing someone else on RW. Dube is probably a good RW, but can't just play him with another small LW. Ryan is too small for the types of players we have on the 4th line. Backlund is a good two way C that doesn;t seem to want to be here. Probably fed up with the Bennett type demotions. Who is left? Prospects that can't get a shot at top 6, but are that type of players. Now we have a starter that will be overplayed because Sutter does that. No backup becuase we can't develop goalies.

Not quite right. If we win, we jump two team in standings. We would drop from 11th to 12th, picking 13th. We get a single point and we get slightly worse lotto odds.

Would not be the first time Bennett has impressed with his start to his career somewhere. For me the biggest failing here is accepting mediocrity and not demanding better. Better to have a vet that plays about 75% commitment and won't block a shot than a young hungry player willing to sacrifice. Let's have mediocre talent and not worry about prospects.

So, Darrel inherited a system from the previous regime. No time to adjust it with limited practice time, nor evaluate what parts of it didn't make sense. I'm not sure Sutter is the right coach, but that's because he fits certain team, which we may not be.

2 games (one suspended), 2 assists, 4 PIM 4 shots, 1 goal called back, 20 minutes of ice. If he can stay out of the sin bin and off the noddy list, he should help FLA

Every series is different, which is my biggest problem with the way they call it. The Dallas series last year was hard to fathom what was legal or not. Did we bring the ghost of Wideman with us again? The FLA game was weird. Call a bunch, then ignore one that was blatant and it sets up a goal. BOS at WAS was a lot of whistles not blown. Marchand being a douche results in being picked from the scrum. No problem. Tough hits and good hockey. Mostly. The trends from regular season to Canadian teams in the playoffs is always perplexing. The standards change so much through a game let alone series. On minute it's okay to tackle McD, the other it's a penalty shot for a good defensive play.

Have to wonder what Sutter does this summer with A/coaches. He's had the same bunch since BP brought in a few and others were from previous times. Since a head coach normally gets to mold his team, wonder what the chances of current guys being relieved. Not to say they were the problem, but the head coach seems to be the only things that has changed over time.

Advise to you, mute TV so you don't have to listen to how McD almost scored a goal. Or how Mike Smith's brilliant puck handling abilities result in goals. Just kidding. Unlike some teams I have watched, EDM is a lotto team without one player. Should be interesting to see how badly they call the games. Is it a case of people touching him results in an automatic penalty? Or where fans and commentators go on about stars not being allowed to play without cheating against them? I enjoy where the teams decide the games and not even-up reffing.

Pretty hard to collect decent 1st rounders when you make the playoffs in 2014/15. You don't always have the luxury of doing a teardown after a player has an iconic playoff as a start to his career. Made a smart trade to get Hammy to help the team grow and add to the young core. Success didn't follow with BH and fairly major retool done mid season. I don't even consider Fox a factor. Somehow I think he signs in NY regardless of what we had for a role. I would almost guarantee that. The issues for me are around trading picks for Stone, Hamonic, Elliott (he wasn't a bad goalie, just mismanaged), Smith, Forbort, Gus.... Those are the ones that robbed us of top prospects. Trading Hammy for Hanifin and Lindholm was sideways at worst. The other issue is failure to do a decent coaching search. Gully should never have been a target. BP was the polar opposite but also had no history of being a head coach on a winner. The it was Wardo, who was okay as an assistant coach, but that's about it. While you can argue we stopped rebuilding way too early, I think it was that we went from building the team to looking for pieces. Trading for goalies, trading picks for useless players, signings of Brouwer and Neal were signals that BT was not evaluating talent properly. They could have been better trades, like trading for Allen, Grubauer or Raanta, or maybe Trochek. Or building cap space for sucker deals. We didn't go after Toffoli, either at TDL or in FA. Some of it predetermined by other lousy work. To sum it up, BT had options that could have resulted in a team much closer to being a contender. Past cap mistakes prevented some of it from happening. Wideman, Smid, Stajan, Bollig come to mind. Wasting growth years on Hiller, Ramo, Elliott and Smith didn't help.

I just mean skipping the AHL. The overall point is that very few players are drafted and go directly to the NHL. The vast majority go back to junior or whatever for at least one year. Part of that is the rules for drafted players under 20 playing in the AHL, though there are some exceptions to that rule. Where it tends to happen more is a high level player can go directly to the NHL because the drafting team sucks. McDavid played in his draft year, being injured for half the season. Eichel, Hanifin, and Rantanen played in their draft year. The rest of the top 10 went back to pre-draft team.

I find it interesting the differences between series for reffing. Bennett's goal called back for interfering with the goalie. BOS gets a goal where 5 players are in the crease including a player that lands on Anderson. Good goal. The challenge could have gone either way, though I think they made the right call. Bennett must be the king of goals being called back. Especially in the playoffs.

Actually, all teams get in the lottery, just that they can only move up 10 spots.

Nobody is out of the lotto that are not in the playoffs. The odds suck for hgiher teams. There is no 10 spots only rule or 2 max wins yet. That starts next year. Even next year, a 16th place team gets a lotto chance. Just can't get to #1.

Gaudreau went directly to the NHL. Brodie did not. It's more about the player being NHL ready than draft placement. And sometimes it's all about timing. This year Fox could have started in the NHL because we didn't have a high end RD. And that's one thing to remeber about college players like Fox. Whether there was manipulation or not, NY was able to sign him and have him on the NHL roster. Just rambling here.

The ARI pick is not being done. If ARI wins either lotto, it goes back and is drawn again. If we are tied with ARI we finish with a better record and have worse odds than ARI (then a re-pick). If we are tied with CHI, we finish with a better record and have worse odds than CHI and ARI. A single point for VAN drops them past SJS and LA. Two wins of any variety puts them past Ottawa. If we gain one or fewer points, we don't change spots we pick unless a later team wins the lotto. We are 10th picking 11th right now. Or 11th picking 11th. Or 13th picking 13. Think I got it right this time.

Ryan Pike @RyanNPike Via NHL media site, #Flames have returned Adam Ruzicka, Connor Mackey & Dominik Simon to their AHL roster. All three were up yesterday on emergency recalls. Wes Gilbertson @WesGilbertson #Flames coach Darryl Sutter was asked today about whether we'd see more prospects over next two games. He stressed they still have a full roster, then added that several kids have been given a look. “We’ve tried to be very respectful of who is deserving to play a game.” (1 of 2) So much for the 2 games each spiel. Much more important to win the next two. Perhaps this could be the NHL sending a message to the Flames about abusing the recall rule, but it sounds more like those deserving had their chance. Onto Froese, Robinson and Rinaldo I guess? You know, those high ranked prospects of ours.

Just saw this and found it interesting.... Rick Dhaliwal (@DhaliwalSports) of Chek News mentioned that Mike Futa has been linked to the Calgary Flames. He worked for the LA Kings as an AGM. He and Sutter have a strong working relationship. I wonder if Treliving would move to a POHO role if Futa is brought in. 1:28 PM · May 17, 2021·Twitter Web App Not sure how much stock I put in this, but at least he's a guy may actually have have some sources. It could also be a ruse.

It's been that way even before Parrot. Crosby and Ovi avoiding auspensions. DSP needs to either get new lawyers to review or stop looking at the team name or player.

Consistency and application are the issue, not the suspension itself. They got this one right, let's see how many they mess up.

I get what you are saying, but him not signing in CGY had nothing to do with disfunction. We spent money on lesser targets like Bill Arnold and John Gilmour. You tend to do that will all your picks. May not have been until the last of his sophomore year that he made that decision. If he was lying to us, then what are we supposed to do? BTW, I remember watching Team USA and Fox playing the final in the WJC. He wasn't noticeably better than anyone else out there. In the season that he chose top go back to college and we traded him, he had dropped off in production.

Well, I think you need to look at what he was handed and what he managed to do. Lot's of misses, but also lots of cap problems he had to wait out or buy out. He should have walked away from Bouma, but that was a loss of an asset if he did. It turned sour though, so I fault him for the extended term he had to buy out. I'm not going to pump him up here. I will say I think he made deals he could this past off-season. There was no specific change to the core that he said was coming. It could have been moving Gio or Backlund or Monahan or Gaudreau, or all of them. There was no specific player that did poorly last year; they all had less than happy playoffs. If he was trying to move Gaudreau and the best he could get back was a late first, would anyone have been happy? In a pandemic cap world, there is only so much you can do. Add to that, the spectre of the expansion draft. Bennett was not going to be able to be protected and still might be lost to FLA. I'm sure it will be a tough choice for them.

He was signed to what you might call a retirement term. Long enough to lower the AAV because he was reportedly looking for much more. Gave him a M-NTC in his final two years as a cherry on top. Are we expecting this past year and next year to be "young and fresh"? Many here have no problem trading Monahan, Gaudreau or Tkachuk because they want to improve the team. And yet, these are players with an "A" or have provided the team with some hope at competing in the NHL. Trades have to make sense, but you can't just be the retirement plan for a player.