Ever since the Calgary Flames missed the playoffs in April, fans and media have been speculating on whether the team’s irrational love affair with general manager Darryl Sutter would blindly ignore his colossal failures of the past 12 months (never mind the past five years), or if the increasingly bizarre series of management stumbles had finally put the Viking Curmudgeon on thin ice.

Well, now we have the answer. He’s on thin ice. Very thin. So thin that the guy likely to take his job is now sitting in the next office down the hall, holding a blow torch and an ice saw.

When the Flames named Jay Feaster as assistant GM on Thursday, the official line was that they’d decided to bring in an experienced NHL exec to help Darryl handle the management of the on-ice product, the scouting, etc. Something they’d been thinking of doing for a long time, Sutter said. Happy to lend a new set of eyes and a different perspective to help Darry out, Feaster said.

Yeah, right.

Think about the timing. This happened two weeks after the NHL draft, a week after Sutter made a couple of a the strangest free-agent decisions not just in Flames history, but in the entire history of the league (and, I might add, a day after several of the Flames’ scouts were fired).

If the Flames were really adding a senior hockey exec based on a long-term plan they’d been working on for some time, wouldn’t you do that before the draft and free agency, to capitalize on that new assistant GM’s wisdom and experience now, rather than have to wait months before his talents will have any impact? Why do it immediately after the draft and free-agent frenzy – both of which garnered the Flames poor reviews?

The answer – based largely on my best guess, but it all fits – is that Flames ownership has had enough. They gave Sutter the benefit of the doubt one last time, but when they saw the total lack of creativity and common sense he exercised over the past two weeks (see the Olli Jokinen file if you need any further evidence), they decided it was time to slip a noose around the GM’s neck and see how it fit.

In Feaster, the Flames now have in place a hockey man fully capable of taking over the GM’s job at a moment’s notice. This is the guy who quickly turned the Tampa Bay Lightning from an out-of-the-playoffs also-ran when he took over in 2002 to Stanley Cup champions (at the expense of the Flames) in 2004. He’s got a strong draft record and has learned some lessons about wrestling with the salary cap that have yet to sink into Darryl Sutter’s thick skull.

In the past month or so there had been rumours that the Flames were ready to bring in someone at assistant GM who would be groomed to take over if and when Sutter would get shown the door and/or kicked further upstairs where he could do less harm to the on-ice product. The name of Kelly Kisio, the hugely successful GM of the Flames-owned WHL franchise the Calgary Hitmen, had surfaced often. But the one big knock against Kisio – and one reason for skepticism about that rumour – was that he had no management experience at the NHL level, so would be a risky successor if Sutter was given the boot.

With Feaster, that issue is solved.  Now the Flames ownership have a built-in safety net should they decide to get rid of Sutter.

If nothing else, this is a screaming signal to Darryl Sutter: You’re hanging on by a thread. We have a guy ready and able to take your job, he’s already on the payroll, he’s learning everything about the organization so when the time comes, we can do this with one quick swing of the axe, quick and painless. Well, painless for the team, anyway. Sutter might feel a bit of a sting.

My sense is that the Sutters – Darryl and kid-brother head coach Brent – might have until November to either rescue their jobs or hang themselves. If the Flames have a poor first month, one or both will be gone – more likely than not, both. The time for the endless fiddling and the arrogant bullshit from the front office is over; it’s produce with the mess you’ve cobbled together, or pack up and head back to the cow pasture in Viking, Alta. where you came from.

As an aside, I loved the story of the first thing Flames co-owner Murray Edwards said to Feaster when he met the ownership after taking the job this week. Edwards shook Feaster’s hand and simply said, “That puck was IN, you know.” – a reference to the controversial Cup-winning-goal-that-never-counted, the one that may or may not have crossed the line off the Flames’ Martin Gelinas in the third period of Game 6 of the 2004 Cup. Good thing Murray doesn’t hold grudges, eh?

Just finished a half-hour as the special guest on Rinkside Rants, a weekly podcast hosted by Tim Redinger, lead blogger for the Buffalo blog, Sabre Noise, and Frank Rekas of the Florida Panthers blog, The Rat Trick. The subject: What the hell is in Darryl Sutter’s head?

I’m not sure if the other guys found it as entertaining as I did, cuz I didn’t give them a chance to get a word in edgewise. Hadn’t realized just how pissed off I was about Sutter’s signing of Olli Jokinen (OK, maybe I DID realize it, just hadn’t said it all out loud), but it sure came spilling out over the half-hour.

Go check out the archive of the show if you get the chance. Good fun, even if the topic was a frustrating, head-scratching one.

This is what happens when I decide to take a little vacation. I go away for a few days, and Darryl Sutter goes insane.

OK, maybe “insane” is the wrong word. But I fear that while I was away from my post, the Flames GM developed Alzheimer’s.

For evidence, I compare Mr. Sutter’s behaviour with that of senior citizens I have encountered who are suffering from senile dementia (bear with me, I was a Psych major in a previous life):

• Senile old guys forget things they’ve already done, and do them again, blissfully unaware.
• Senile old guys can’t keep track of which year it is.
• Senile old guys see the faces of the children of their old friends and mistake them for their old friends, having lost track of what year it is or how much time has passed.
• Senile old guys get grumpy and defensive when you suggest to them that they’ve lost their freakin’ minds.
• Senile old guys drop their pants in public – and you want to laugh, even though it’s sad.

How many of these did Sutter do in the past couple of weeks? Pretty much all of them. (Well, I believe the pants-dropping was more figurative than literal, but still.)

Bad enough that the guy drafts the unremarkable sons of two former Flames, clearly under the delusion that these guys are their fathers rather than a couple of likely career minor-leaguers. Bad enough that he then trades for yet another unremarkable son of a former Flame (Logan MacMillan, son of Bob, in case you missed it), who already has a head start on that unremarkable minor-league career.

Then the guy who already made a zillion questionable roster moves in the past year made two more in the free-agent frenzy that will solidify his legend as a hockey executive who didn’t just go off the deep end, he did a double-gainer triple-twisting belly flop into it. With no trunks on. (Again with the pants.)

Signing Alex Tanguay – a guy he eagerly traded for four years ago as the solution to Calgary’s chronic scoring problems, then just as eagerly traded away two years ago as a soft underperformer, and now has again eagerly re-signed as the solution to Calgary’s chronic scoring problems (see forgetfulness and lack of sense of time, above) – was bad enough. At least he came cheap, after spending the past year impressing absolutely no one in Tampa Bay.

But, seriously, OLLI JOKINEN?

The story on Jokinen is almost identical to Tanguay, except the time frame was shorter (acquired in March 2009, dumped in February 2010, re-signed in July 2010), the excitement when he was first acquired more extreme, the disppointment in his play more bitter, and the re-signing last week much, much more perplexing.

Jokinen was already Darryl Sutter’s single biggest failure as a GM. He traded away a quality centre and a first-round draft pick to get him. He scored just 17 goals in 84 games while here, while a promising team sank into oblivion with him playing a leading role. Then Sutter traded him away for worse than nothing – he got saddled with the fat, useless contract of fat, useless Ales Kotalik for his troubles, but got nothing else save a few games out of Chris Higgins, and also lost useful tough-guy Brandon Prust in the exchange.

But now, he makes things worse – yes, you can do worse than the above, and Sutter found a way – by actually bringing this deadwood back into the dressing room. Did he forget all that other stuff? Did he not realize what an unmitigated disater Jokinen has been for the Flames on every level imaginable? Did he really think this was a good idea?

The result of this signing is that while Sutter stubbornly defends his decision, the entire hockey world is laughing at him. Not even behind his back. The NHL needed this – they haven’t had a GM to ridicule on this level since Mike Milbury “retired” to go into broadcasting. Shit, Sutter is making Milbury look like freakin’ Sam Pollack.

The former most boneheaded GM in the history of the Flames, Doug Risebrough, should send Sutter a Christmas card and a bottle of sctoch this year. Finally, someone has come along to make Flames fans more pissed off than the Doug Gilmour trade.

Please, someone fire this wingnut before he trades for Nick Fotiu’s daughter and re-signs Gary Leeman.

A few years ago, Sutter could do no wrong in the eyes of Flames faithful. He had led the team from the hinterlands to the Stanley Cup finals. Sure, he made a few bad moves since then - poor drafts, poor free-agent signings, trades that didn’t pan out, gave up on some decent young players too soon – but for the longest time, the fans gave him a free pass. “Darryl has a plan, he knows what he’s doing, he’s got something up his sleeve, he’s a shrewd one,” people said.

Well, now it’s clear he’s got nothing up his sleeve. He’s not shrewd. He has no plan. The guy is out of ideas, out of thoughts. And so he’s recycling old ones. Bad ones. Dumb ones. And then standing up and trying to sell us all on the idea that this all makes sense.

Hey, you loony-tunes emperor – you have no clothes. We can see your wiener. And we’re laughing, even though it’s sad.

My blogging partner on Flame for Thought – Iain Godsman, the founding father of the Flaming Circle of Jerks and perpetually its funniest member – sent me a link the other day to a great blog on Yahoo! Sports showing the goofy “glamour shot” photos the NHL has draft picks pose for after they are selected on draft day. Thanks to Iain for spotting it, but even more thanks to Greg Wyshynski, author of the Puck Daddy blog on Yahoo, for bringing such hilarity (much of it unintentional) to public attention.

The standout for goofy photos was a guy who was clearly mugging for comic effect for the cameras – so much so that Greg put him on his top-10 list twice. It was none other than Kirill Kabanov, the third-round pick of the New York Islanders, he of high-first-round skills but don’t-touch-with-a-10-foot-hockey-stick personality issues. 

As readers of this blog will know by now, I’m a Kabanov fan – I thought his character issues were being overblown, and that he might be the steal of the draft. I was more than a little disappointed that the Flames passed over this potential diamond in the rough when he was still available when the Flames finally got their first pick early in the third round.

Yes, Kirill got booted off two teams in less than a year, raising all kinds of mysterious red flags about his character. But these goofy photos help flesh out the picture about his personality, and that makes me even more upset that Calgary didn’t snap him up.

What we’ve uncovered here is that rare hockey combination of scary-talented and batshit-crazy. How much fun would that have been for Calgary fans to watch over the next 10 years?

Oh, well – at least he’ll fit in well on Long Island – where batshit-craziness has been standard business practice for years now.

By almost any standard, this was a dull NHL draft for the Calgary Flames. It was bound to be, with no picks in the first two rounds and little appetite for a blockbuster trade. But it was made even more dull by GM Darryl Sutter’s typical lack of imagination at the draft table.

For a guy with a dismal track record for drafting and developing players (The Hockey News noted recently that the Flames rank tied for LAST in the entire league in drafted players who are on the roster, and in the bottom third of the NHL for drafted players who are in the league, period), you’d think Sutter might be willing to try something a little different, roll the dice a bit – especially given that he didn’t have a pick until Number 64 (early 3rd round) and that he is sitting on a team that missed the playoffs and has almost nothing coming down the pipe in terms of impact-type prospects. Indeed, he had some risky yet potentially very high-return options available to him even at the late stage of the draft where the Flames were finally able to enter the fray.

Instead, he not only stuck with the kinds of players he routinely drafts - earnest, hard-working third- and fourth-line candidates – but even fell back on recycling names of former Flames. 

His top pick – Max Reinhart of the WHL’s Kootenay Ice – is the son of a former Flames first-rounder, Paul Reinhart, who was a better-than-average offensive defenceman through the 1980s. This younger Reinhart plays centre, but would appear to lack the offensive flare of his dad: He scored 51 points in 72 games last season. (In Paul Reinhart’s draft year, he scored 129 points in Kitchener of the OHL.)

The Flames seem to think he has offensive upside, but that may be more wishful thinking and faith in genetics than anything else. Unless he’s hiding something that no one has seen yet, kids who score 50 points in junior are destined to score maybe half that in the NHL. He’s not particularly big (6′1″, 180), not very physical. Reinhart was ranked 79th by Central Scouting; he didn’t even crack The Hockey News’s top 100 prospects for this draft.

The guy picked immediately after Reinhart, by the New York Islanders, was Kirill Kabanov. Now, Kabanov has all kinds of character red-flags fluttering over him, which resulted in him slipping down the draft further than most people had expected; but most scouts say that on talent alone, he may be one of the top three or four guys in the entire draft.

Where Calgary was selecting, to still have that kind of potential sitting there, on a team that’s desperate for offensively-skilled players, this would have been worth the risk. Instead, Sutter actually chose a guy maybe 20 spots higher than he deserved to go, rather than snapping up someone who could easily turn out to be the steal of the draft.

And Kabanov wasn’t even the only risky-yet-high-potential player who had slipped down the draft board and was still available at that point. What about Jordan Weal, the 102-point scorer with the WHL’s Regina Pats (note: that’s DOUBLE what Reinhart scored, playing in the same league), whose only knock is that he’s not very big (5′9″, 162)? Or Stanislav Galiev, a highly skilled Russian playmaking centre who notched 60 points in 67 games with Saint John of the QMJHL?

In fact, Galiev was still available when the Flames made their second pick – Joey Leach, also from Kootenay, a big, stay-at-home defenceman who managed 26 points in 70 games. Last time I checked, about the only thing the Flames actually had successfully developed on the farm were solid stay-at-home defencemen. So, naturally, they needed to draft another.

Or, maybe, two? Sutter’s third selection (fourth round, No. 103 overall) was John Ramage – son of former Flame Rob Ramage, who had been a first-overall pick in the 1979 draft. The younger Ramage plays at the University of Wisconsin, and played for the U.S. junior team that won the gold medal at this year’s World Juniors. Again, unlike Daddy, he’s not much of a scorer (11 points in 33 games), but he works his tail off and is considered more a shutdown-type d-man – yet at 6′1″ and 184 pounds, unlikely he’s big enough to fill that role in the NHL.

The Flames’ fourth pick – Bill Arnold, a centre with the U.S. under-18 national development program – did look like a bargain at No. 108 overall, as most draft lists had him pencilled in as many as 50 picks higher. He did score 23 points in 26 games last season, but scouts consider him more of a checker at the NHL level. He’s a typical Sutter kind of guy – works hard, wins battles and plays tough, but below average with the puck.

It’s entirely possible that all four of these guys will make it to the NHL. Unfortunately, it’s also possible that none of them will have much impact; they all look destined to reside in the bottom half of an NHL roster. And they look a lot like the sorts of players the Flames already have.

It’s too bad. Sutter had a chance at getting something more. Instead, he chose more of the same.

FanSided’s hockey bloggers recently completed an NHL mock draft, in advance of the NHL’s real entry draft taking place in Los Angeles this weekend. Since FanSided is missing bloggers for a few of its team sites (including Edmonton, which has the Number One overall pick), and since (sob) my Flames are unencumbered with a first-round pick this year thanks to a very ill-advised trade (is it wrong to wish Olli Jokinen would impale himself on a hockey stick?), the FanSided hockey braintrust asked me to handle the first-overall pick on behalf of the Oilers.

Now, being a Flames fan – which, by definition, means loathing the Oilers with every fibre of my being, and wishing them bad luck in everything they do  - my natural temptation was to trade the Number One pick to Calgary for, say, Ales Kotalik. (and then, of course, have Kotalik refuse to report, forcing the Oil to trade him for a bag of pucks and and old skate sharpener.) OK, done. “With the first overall pick, the Calgary Flames select…”

But FanSided’s leadership refused the transaction. I offered to make it more realistic – Jay Bouwmeester, Matt Stajan and, oh, I don’t know, next year’s first-rounder – but they wouldn’t budge.

So, the Oilers were stuck with the first-overall pick, and they were stuck with the enemy picking it for them. So, I tried to be conscientious. Admittedly, I took all of 10 seconds to make my decision, but that’s all I would have needed even if it wasn’t the Oilers.

Taylor Hall. Windsor Spitfires. No question. No debate.

OK, so no debate for me. Others have debated it plenty leading up to the draft. Hall is considered neck-and-neck with Tyler Seguin, another OHL scoring machine, as the top choice. Hall is considered the better goal scorer, Seguin the better playmaker. Hall is a left wing, Seguin a centre.

Now, some people have been saying it makes way more sense for the Oilers to take Seguin. They have lots of quality prospects on the wings, but are desperately thin at centre. They have young guys who filled the nets in junior, and they need a guy to set them up. The playmaking centre is the guy for them, they insist.

Hogwash, I say. When you’re blessed with the Number One pick, you take the best player, regardless of position. And Hall is, no doubt, the best player.

And I say this while citing a quasi-legal NHL draft precedent known as “Lafleur vs. Dionne”.

In 1971, the Montreal Canadiens wrestled long and hard over whether to pick Lafleur – an electifying right wing (and occasional defenceman) who had led the Quebec Remparts of the QMJHL to a Memorial Cup victory (almost single-handedly establishing “the Q” as a legitimate top-flight junior league in the process ) while breaking every goal-scoring record in sight – or Dionne, the slick little centre who had left Quebec to play with St. Catherines of the Ontario Hockey Association, winning two scoring titles in what was generally considered a higher-calibre league.

The Habs chose Lafleur - even though Dionne might have been the safer pick and filled a critical need in Montreal’s front lines (remember, Jean Beliveau had just retired after the Habs’ 1971 Cup win).  And while history tells us that both he and Dionne were outstanding NHLers – indeed, Hall of Famers – the fact is that Dionne could never match the excitement that Lafleur’s lightning-fast speed, electrifying skills and on-ice flare generated. (Not to mention the five Stanley Cups Lafleur contributed to.) Guy Lafleur was the NHL’s unchallenged superstar, its most recognizable hero, for several years in the mid-to-late 1970s; Marcel Dionne was a pale challenger to his throne.

And all this despite that fact the the Habs spent more than a decade trying to find a centre who was a good fit with Lafleur, to fill that hole on their top line – never with any great success. It turned out Le Demon Blond, and the Canadiens, didn’t need an A-list centre; Lafleur dominated the ice and made those around him better from the wing, and put on a hell of a high-speed show in the process. He was a 1970s equivalent of Alex Ovechkin.

Taylor Hall may be the Alex Ovechkin, or Guy Lafleur, of the 2010s. All you have to do is watch him once to see it. The guy takes your breath away. When he skates with the puck, he isn’t just fast with it; he travels through time with it. He’s mesmerizing.

Like Lafleur, he has also carried his junior team to the Memorial Cup championship on his shoulders. In fact, he did it twice – back-to-back titles, and back-to-back tornament MVPs for Hall.

I don’t care that he’s not a centre. The Oilers need help everywhere; focusing on a lack of centre is like the captain of the Titanic focusing on a lack of caviar.

This guy is going to be amazing. He’s got tools that Seguin, everyone else in the draft, indeed all but a couple of guys in the NHL - as good as they might be – can only dream of. He’s magical. He’ll fill buildings. He’ll fill nets. He’ll fill youtube. Just watch – and enjoy the show.

The rise, fall and (almost) redemption of Theoren Fleury made for great human drama. Now it looks like it may make for actual theatre.

Alberta Theatre Projects, one of Calgary’s premiere theatre companies, is workshopping a one-man play based on the turbulent life of the former Flames great, who battled sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction and a diminutive body to nevertheless become one of the most successful and electifying players of his era.

The play was written by Kirstie McLellan Day, the ghost-writer who “co-wrote” Theo’s autobiography that came out last year – right around the time he was attempting a (failed) comeback with the Flames. Conveniently, this play project has come up a couple of months ahead of the publication of the paperback version of the book; say what you like about little Theo, but he’s got a knack for promotion.

Day, by the way, is the wife of Larry Day, a longtime Calgary TV producer and personality who, among other things, hosts the Flames This Week television show carried on Sportsnet West. It’s all one cozy little hockey town in Calgary, isn’t it?

Having read the autobiography, I can tell you that when a guy comes off as an arrogant little prick even when he’s telling his own story, he really must be one. You don’t end up liking this guy by the end of the book, though you have to admire his ability to play as well as he did, as stoned as he often was.

Still, he was always a thrill to watch, and played the game with the kind of passion and anger that the Flames have been lacking the past few years. And even at 41 years old, I still think he would look good in a Flames uniform; on a team that was a couple of wins away from making the playoffs and was killed by a lack of scoring, he’s a proven scorer who showed last pre-season that he still had the touch. At very least, he might have added a few power-play and shootout goals that would have been the difference last season between making the playoffs, and, well, doing what they did.

Always being more bold than smart, Theo originally planned to act in the play himself. Thankfully, he’s decided against that, and a casting call has gone out to professional actors to play the part. (I wonder if Sean Penn would be interested in doing a little local Calgary theatre?)