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General manager Darryl Sutter, who coached the team to the Stanley Cup final in 2004, did not second-guess Keenan’s decision to give Kiprusoff the hook.
“He’s an elite coach and there’s only a handful of them,” Sutter said. “He’s our coach absolutely.”
If you listened to the presser today, here’s what Sutter said about Keenan:
-He had two good regular seasons
-They did well in last year’s playoffs to hang with San Jose
-The decision to fire him was not based on this year’s playoff performance
Um…so what was it based on? Sutter getting bored?
It was very strange — listen to the press conference if you get a chance (I’m sure Fan960 will podcast it and flames.nhl.com will make it available for streaming).
Update: Here’s the link to the afternoon press conference.
Mike Keenan was finally fired yesterday, and the popular opinion seems to place no more than half of the blame on the former Flames coach. Keenan was dealt the difficult hand of finishing off the season with less than a full roster, incurring many injuries in the process, and playing out a playoff schedule without his top defenseman, a couple other of his top 6, and a goalie who didn’t get much rest due to the attempt to secure the 3-seed in the West (which they would have handily won with a full complement of players). What does this mean? In terms of Sutter, it means that he’s going to have to start using a mirror.
What this dismissal does is heap even more scrutiny on Darryl Sutter and his blueprint. He recycled Keenan, an old-school cage-rattler who hadn’t won a playoff round since 1996, to the astonishment of many. He assembled this group; built it in his image. He’s told everyone, again and again, that it was fully capable of a long spring run.
And yet, here they are, facing a fourth coaching change in the past five seasons.
For the Calgary Flames, it all depends on who comes in next. One thing you know for certain when you play a Mike Keenan team — it ain’t going to be easy. In a division like the Northwest, you better be ready to hire someone in that mold or you’ll find yourself in the same place as Tony Granato’s Colorado Avalanche (with a team posessing nearly as much talent as any other team in the division).
For Mike Keenan, I think he will get another shot if he wants to do this. It may not be for several years, but he did his image a favor in Calgary. He managed to keep the peace in the locker room, he won the favor of his important veterans (even Kiprusoff), and he only resorted to the most challenging tactics at critical times…and they typically were successful.
The loss, last year, to San Jose in the 7-game series was a case of Keenan’s team playing way above their talent level. This year they had the talent on the roster to win the Cup, but much of that talent was laid up in the trainer’s room. Much of that talent fell out of contention when Sutter put the club in a poor position of suiting up 15 players at the end of the year, a time when you want to roll four lines and get everyone in playoff shape.
This wasn’t a coaching problem. This wasn’t exactly a popular move made for the fans. This was likely a last-ditch effort for Darryl Sutter to bring another brother into the Calgary mix before he is smoked out of town. That smoke seems to be rising by the day.
Update: Sutter’s predecessor says Sutter deserves plenty of the blame:
“With this core of players, they have flamed out in the playoffs four consecutive years in the first round. I would suggest some of the issues they are facing are not going to go away with the coach.
I think (Keenan is being asked to take) full responsibility where he doesn’t deserve full responsibility.”
The Calgary Flames had a team with no business losing in the first round. That’s not taking anything away from Chicago, who played a great series. Still, the Flames geared up roster-wise for this series and expected more.
Let’s keep in mind that Iginla forgot to show up for most of the series. Jokinen showed one game of solid effort. Kiprusoff was his usually horrible self come April.
Let’s also keep in mind that the Flames were without their top defenseman, Robyn Regehr, and Dion Phaneuf for the final game.
Still, when all is said and done, the coach often (unfairly) takes the blame for these kinds of series. And, it’s not like a person can completely ignore the way the season went. After a rough start, the team completely re-tooled their defensive game and went on an amazing tear where they seemed to win the division early in the game. Except, they peaked too early and never regained that consistency they once had. Maybe that is a coach’s problem, I’m not sure.
If I had to put a few fingers on what happened in this series I would point to a few things that really were to blame for series loss for the Flames:
It’s likely that Keenan will be the fall guy and very quickly. I don’t think he should be, but reality says that this is what happens when a team can’t seem to get over the hump. If Darryl Sutter is smart and calculated, however, he’ll realize that there were a lot of circumstances that were far more to blame than a coach who managed a competitive series while having to play the likes of Warrent Peters and Anders Eriksson (Eriksson’s first action of the entire season coming in the post-season).
It’s unfortunate. My interest in the NHL playoff took a serious hit this evening.
National Hockey League: #NHL
Eastern Conference: #NHLE
Atlantic Division
New Jersey Devils: #NJD
New York Islanders: #NYI
New York Rangers: #NYR
Philadelphia Flyers: #PHI
Pittsburgh Penguins: #PIT
Northeast Division
Boston Bruins: #BOS
Buffalo Sabres: #BUF
Montreal Canadiens: #MON
Ottawa Senators: #OTT
Toronto Maple Leafs: #TOR
Southeast Division
Atlanta Thrashers: #ATL
Carolina Hurricanes: #CAR
Florida Panthers: #FLA
Tampa Bay Lightning: #TAM
Washington Capitals: #WAS
Western Conference: #NHLW
Central Division
Chicago Blackhawks: #CHI
Columbus Blue Jackets: #CBJ
Detroit Red Wings: #DET
Nashville Predators: #NSH
St. Louis Blues: #STL
Northwest Division
Calgary Flames: #CGY
Colorado Avalanche: #COL
Edmonton Oilers: #EDM
Minnesota Wild: #MIN
Vancouver Canucks: #VAN
Pacific Division
Anaheim Ducks: #ANA
Dallas Stars: #DAL
Los Angeles Kings: #LOS
Phoenix Coyotes: #PHO
San Jose Sharks: #SAN
——
Note: Some of these would be the same as other professional sports teams in the same city/state, but if you also included #NHL it would be easy to sort.
Example: If you are talking about Vancouver vs. New York Rangers, it would be easier to include #VAN #NYR and #NHL (12 characters) than #Canucks, #Rangers, and #NHL (21 characters). Plus, people generally following the NHL could just search for #NHL, and the others could sort by one team or both teams in a particular game.
Trade deadline: Include both teams and #NHLTrade. Consider also including #NHL for those following general #NHL activity.
Please comment on any changes you would like to see made and if you think this is viable. I didn’t do the divisions because I don’t think people will generally just follow one division, but those could be done. This is only my humble opinion, too, and I just think it would make it easier to find the most relevant info to what you desire at any given time.
“That part of the industry has always bothered me – that you try to find a solution and success by making a coaching change, and often times it does not work,” said Keenan. “Probably more often than not it does not work. But it’s a desperate measure at a desperate time when you feel that something of that magnitude has to happen in order to jump-start your team. It’s a little bit of a gamble by a manager to a certain extent, but the manager has to read the situation as well as he can and rely on his own experience and review the history of the team and what he thinks his chances are, what the results might be.”
Obviously this is coming from a biased person. It is an interesting distinction to make — something Keenan hints at here — that sometimes these changes are made because a manager thinks something major could stir the pot, like the year the Devils fired Ftorek with less than 10 games remaining in the season and went on to win the cup. There are also times when it seems a manager is trying to say “it ain’t my fault.” The Renney situation seems like one of those. The Rangers, for all of the money they have spent, have a very unimpressive roster. The players that are solid, like Lundqvist, are products of the system. It wasn’t all that long ago when Glen Sather pledged to build from within, only to quickly go out and spend money on aging veterans.
I remember when Sather was a frustrated manager for the Edmonton Oilers. He had lost a few key players to free agency and spewed that if he were managing the Rangers (with all of their financial resources) he’d never lose a game. Years in, he still hasn’t won a Cup. Have a look in the mirror, Slats.
In the “You Can’t Make It Up” category, there is a class action settlement with Zicam paying out $12m to people who claim the cold remedy cost them their sense of smell. In case you’re counting, I’d gladly give up my sense of smell to never have a cold again. Posting this, I’m sure, disqualifies me from my fortune, but I guess that’s the way it goes.
Cammalleri could be dealt. He is another option for the Pens, but I truly feel that the Flames may be having their slump at the perfect time. This team is too good to panic.
This is one of the most incredible statements I’ve seen all year and it proves that this guy is full of crap. Can someone, with a straight face, claim that a team so far ahead in their division and locked into a solid playoff spot barring historic collapse is going to trade their top scorer? Give me a break, Eklund. No, wait, I’ve taken the break upon myself.
First of all, let me state that I do not condone what A-Roid did. It tarnishes my view of him in the context of the great players, which is a shame because the guy was a total natural without all of that and before all of that. However, I’m already tired of what is being done to the man. The Cliff Notes (in my words) of the interview with Peter Gammons, and the natural breaking point is as follows:
Gammons: So, A-Roid, you are accused of using PHDs. What do you have to say about that.
A-Roid: Yes, Peter, I took PHDs. I signed a big deal with Texas and I felt the pressure to live up to that contract and I took a banned substance. I should not have done it and am sorry for doing so.
THE END
But, no, the interview can’t be over just like that. Gammons has a marquee player sitting in the same room with him. So the interview goes on….and on….and on. Soon A-Roid, simply with nothing else to say, starts to make excusey-sounding statements and pretty soon the public perception of the interview is that A-Roid isn’t sorry for what he did but instead making excuses for it. The thing is, if the interview ends where I wish it would, A-Roid probably has said his genuine part and the diarrhea of the mouth has not yet begun.
Again, I’m not defending A-Roid, but there is nothing else he could have said beyond my natural ending. There is nothing he can say that will make people feel better about this than “I’m sorry for taking the PHDs.” As Kenny once sang, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.” Gammons didn’t allow A-Roid to quit while he was “ahead.”
As for A-Roid’s legacy, this is a killer. He was such a natural, coming up at 18 or 19 years old and tearing it up in the majors, on a team with Griffey, Unit, Edgar and Tino, and more. I think he could have done a lot this on his own. How much? We’ll never know. That is the crushing reality.
I got the following message from Coborn’s Delivers yesterday:
Dear Valued Customer,
The Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning to consumers nationwide that a Salmonella outbreak has been linked to consumption of products containing peanut butter and peanut paste produced by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) at its Blakely, Georgia processing plant.
We wanted to assure you that the products you have purchased from CobornsDelivers were NOT included in the warning, and that any affected products are removed from our SuperStore as soon as we receive a recall notice.
Should you happen to purchase a product from CobornsDelivers that is later recalled, we will immediately send an email notifying you of the recall.
This communication is being sent to you as a courtesy. For more details you can view the FDA warning notice at: www.fda.gov
Thank you,
CobornsDelivers
P.S. Product Warning/Recall notification is one of the hidden benefits to shopping at CobornsDelivers. Because we keep track of everything you’ve purchased, we can notify you immediately if it’s affected by a product warning or recall. No guesswork, no worrying, no need to check mysterious codes on packaging. We simply send you an email. It’s something we hope we don’t have to do often, but isn’t it nice to know that we can?
I have to admit, this is a pretty re-assuring idea. We don’t buy nearly all of our groceries online, but if there was a widespread outbreak of something (like the peanut butter thing), it might be a temporary way to increase your safety.
