Flames fire HC Darryl Sutter

Sutter’s dismissal comes two weeks after former GM Brad Treliving left the organization. The former Stanley Cup champion’s survival of that announcement seemed to indicate that he might stay on as coach but only prolonged the inevitable. 

The Flames narrowly missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs in their first season without franchise centerpieces Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk.

Gaudreau joined the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets in free agency, while Tkachuk forced his way into a trade to the Florida Panthers. The 25-year-old’s comments since being traded have indicated that his relationship with Sutter soured throughout the 2021-2022 season.

Treliving attempted to extend Sutter and the Flames’ championship window by signing Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar, both acquired in the Tkachuk trade, to lucrative extensions while bringing in Nazem Kadri via free agency.

While Weegar was reliable on the blueline in 2022-2023, Kadri regressed to his career averages, and Huberdeau struggled mightily. The forward had his worst season since 2014-2015, and a 60-point backslide from his 115-point campaign in 2021-2022 to 55 this year was the worst in NHL history.

Sutter’s draconian leadership style tends to have a brief window of potency before his locker rooms turn on him. When his freshly-minted roster failed to produce a postseason appearance, the writing was on the wall for the coach’s second stint in Calgary.

Flames president of hockey operations Don Maloney will set about finding replacements for Treliving and Sutter, presumably in that order, throughout the offseason. Whoever he selects will have no small task in front of them.

Calgary’s roster is one of the league’s oldest and most expensive; it will only get costlier when the 29-year-old Huberdeau’s $10.5M AAV extension through 2031 kicks in this summer.

Cap woes aside, the recent losses of Gaudreau, Tkachuk, and cap casualties Mark Giordano and Sean Monahan opened up an on-ice leadership vacuum that was apparent when the Flames failed to buckle down over the stretch despite superior talent.

Maloney’s hires in the coming month could be the difference between a return to contention to the Scotiabank Saddledome or a slide down the tubes of the Western Conference.