A last desperate attempt to salvage a season going rapidly off the rails? Or a contemplative hire, based on the theory that if you can’t fire an entire hockey team, the next best course of action is to appoint a coach who will light a fire on the underachieving incumbents?
The decision on Thursday evening by the Calgary Flames to bring back Darryl Sutter to coach the team is probably a mixture of both. The Flames hired Sutter to replace Geoff Ward for the remainder of this season and two additional seasons, charting a new/old course for a team that’s been unable to form any sort of identity, with its current nucleus in place.
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Make no mistake about one thing. With Sutter, there is never any ambiguity. Some people, once they reach a certain age, may soften around the edges. That’s not Darryl Sutter. That’ll likely never be Darryl Sutter. Sutter is blunt, hard-edged, hard-nosed. Use any adjective you like and as long as it conjures up the image of an old-school, weather-worn rancher from northern Alberta, you pretty much have a picture of what Sutter will bring to the mix in Calgary.
He is old-school in his values and his approach. He believes in a defence-first philosophy. Those years in Los Angeles when the Kings were winning Stanley Cups, they were never among the league leaders in offence. But you could usually find them in contention for Vezina and Jennings trophies.
Philosophically, if you’re looking for a kind and gentle message, look elsewhere.
The thing about Sutter is he wins more games than he loses. And when his teams do lose, life can be pretty miserable. The object of hiring Sutter to coach the team was unmistakable – it was to light a fire under a group of reasonably talented hockey players that just eked back to .500 on Thursday night, during an impressive 7-3 win over the Ottawa Senators that also marked Ward’s final appearance behind the bench. Rarely does a fired hockey coach go out on a winning note – but these were desperate times in Calgary, a team that is currently fifth out of seven in the NHL’s North Division and has been spinning its wheels almost from the start of the season, inconsistent in virtually every area of its game.
So, the culture and the working conditions are about to change in a hurry and any of the holdovers from Sutter’s previous years with the Flames, which at the moment is limited to team captain Mark Giordano, can provide a short primer on how life is about to change going forward. There probably won’t be a lot of laughs. There’ll be a level of accountability that most probably haven’t seen before. Behind closed doors, Sutter generally doesn’t mince words. The good news there: Players will know exactly where they stand at any given moment.
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But for all that, the resume is impressive. Sutter most recently coached the Kings from 2011 to 2017 and presided over their Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014. In all, he has been an NHL head coach for 18 seasons, having previously worked in Chicago and San Jose as well as Calgary and L.A. In 15 of those 18 seasons, his teams finished with a winning regular-season record.
Most recently, he’d been hired by his old Blackhawks teammate Bob Murray to act as a coaching consultant for the Ducks’ team that Murray manages. Many of us privately believed that if Murray were to make a coaching change for the last-place Ducks, his first choice might have been Sutter. Sutter’s last turn behind the Flames’ bench also resulted in their best playoff result of the past 30 years – when he led the 2004 team to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost in seven games to the Lightning.
In all, Sutter’s coaching record in Calgary was a credible 107-73-15-15. He also served as the team’s GM for just over seven years – from April 2003 until December 2010. Recently, amid growing pressure on current general manager Brad Treliving to dismiss Ward, many on social media recommended Sutter as a possible replacement.
Rarely does that ever happen but here the Flames essentially gave the people what they wanted. Now, comes the hard part. Taking over a team, just shy of the mid-point of the season, and instilling enough of a change to set them on a winning track.
In 2012, when the Kings were mounting their first of two Stanley Cup pushes, I canvassed a number of players on their team about life with Darryl. Jarret Stoll, now a commentator on Kings’ television broadcasts, described it as a democracy of sorts, noting: “You don’t want a guy that blows smoke, you want a guy who tells you how it is. He doesn’t miss much – and if he sees something, he’ll let you know, no matter who you are, a role player who plays five or six minutes, or a guy who plays 22.”
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Stoll added: “Everybody’s the same on our team; that’s how he treats us. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Justin Williams described Sutter as “open and approachable. As a player, he lets you know what’s expected of you and when he wants more from you. I like the fact that when you do something well, he says, ‘Great job.’ When you’re not doing something, he also tells you that, so there’s no guessing.”
Defenceman Drew Doughty freely admitted he was scared of Sutter when Sutter first took over from Terry Murray. “You don’t want to be on his bad side,” Doughty told me, “because it’s not fun. I was on his bad side for a few games and his sarcastic-ness, it’ll get to you. You can play a good game but if you make one mistake, he’s on you no matter what.
“Sometimes, it’s frustrating, but he’s making sure every little step is perfect. He’s adamant on every single thing. Without your top players being your best, you won’t win too many games.”
Well, it’s hard to argue with Doughty on that final point. Winning teams generally squeeze the most out of their best players.
Calgary’s best players this season have been up-and-down. The good news is, once healthy, Jacob Markstrom should provide the level of goaltending that Sutter teams generally require to win. During the Cup run in 2004, it was Miikka Kiprusoff leading the way. In L.A., it was Jonathan Quick. Markstrom dressed as the back-up to David Rittich on Thursday night, after missing time with an injury, so he should be good to go Saturday when the Battle of Alberta resumes in Edmonton.
Sutter had been living his wife Wanda and son Christopher on their ranch in Viking, Alta., so there’ll be no need to quarantine, or travel very far. Thus far, the Battle of Alberta has featured a couple of mild skirmishes this season. With Sutter aboard, you can be sure the intensity will be cranked up to a higher level.
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Considering there were other experienced coaches available – including Bruce Boudreau and Gerard Gallant – it was interesting to see that the Flames chose to go down this path instead. What happens next? Who knows? But maybe Thomas Wolfe will be proven wrong. Maybe you can go home again.
(Photo: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
