Tuesday’s win against the Florida Panthers was arguably the Calgary Flames most complete game of the season. But the team’s play leading up to that game left much to be desired. While no 82-game season is perfect, things were trending in an all-too-familiar direction.
Jeez, they were good.
On Tuesday night against Florida, the Calgary Flames played just about the best I’d seen all season. Their stars were awesome. They got scoring from all over the lineup, including the defence. Special teams play was tremendous. And Sean Monahan scored 2 goals, giving fans a taste of the 30-goal scorer he used to be.
It was a feelgood story all around.
Yet, when asked whether the Flames had conquered the lack of emotion that had been plaguing the team for the last while, Head Coach Darryl Sutter responded by saying, “We won the game”. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Sutter’s outlook on the the team got me to thinkin’. All of this is beginning to sound a little familiar.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. The Calgary Flames hire a new coach. The team plays well under the new boss, occasionally well enough to get to the playoffs. At some point during the coach’s tenure, the team begins to falter. The coach makes his feelings about his team’s attitude public. The coach gets fired.
It has happened in some form or another, starting with Bob Hartley’s exit in 2016. After Hartley came Glen Gulutzan. His first year with the team was good enough to make the playoffs. His second year record was a less successful 37-35-10 and his demise reached it’s peak when he angrily threw his stick into empty Saddledome seats after sloppy practice drills.
Bill Peters succeeded Gulutzan. He would coach the team to first place in the Western Conference in his first year. Peters, of course, was not fired in his second year. He resigned as a result racist remarks he made some 10 years prior while in the Chicago Blackhawks system. Irrespective, the Calgary Flames were a middling 12-12-2 up to that point. So I have to wonder if a coaching change wasn’t being considered anyway.
After Peters came Geoff Ward, and the story was the same. Ward got them to the ‘play-in’ round of the COVID-affected 2019-2020, but was dismissed following an 11-11-2 start in 2020-2021. Much like his predecessors, Ward called out his team. “We need start giving a ”, was his comment in the video below. He would be fired about a month later.
Three coaches (four if you include Sutter), same basic story.
During that time, what remained largely unchanged was the player core of the team. Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Mikael Backlund, Matthew Tkachuk and, until this season, Mark Giordano were all mainstays. At some point, this group of Calgary Flames seem to run out of ’emotional’ gas at a certain point through a coach’s tenure.
Some last longer than others. Gulutzan coached 164 games for the team. Ward only lasted 66. Sutter is only a little over 50 games into his tenure. But I cannot help but wonder if he’s already where all his predecessors have been before.
Certainly COVID has played a role. The Calgary Flames did have a significant 19-day layoff while the team was in NHL-mandated isolation. Add to that a series of postponed games, and there are excuses for inconsistency. However, recall that the team had dropped 4 consecutive games in lackluster performances before entering COVID protocol. As such, I had thought the layoff would be good for the team, but their post-COVID record suggests otherwise
The question remains, then. Which Calgary Flames team are we going to see in the coming weeks? Will it be the team that was near perfect against the Florida Panthers, the same group we saw in the first 20 games of the season? Or will it be the emotionally drained group that got Sutter’s predecessors fired?
We’ll get a peek at the answer on Saturday against an embattled Edmonton Oilers team.