Brian Burke steps down.

lightstorm

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Oct 17, 2016
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Burke's success in Anaheim = S. Niedermayer wanted to play with his brother and Pronger wanted out of Edmonton.

He's as much of a Cup-team builder as Feaster is.
 

Johnny Hoxville

The Return of a Legend
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I think Burke is a good leader and a smart man, I think he also commands respect from his peers. He should definitely go into the HHOF. I think he was also the key force behind turning the Flames around from the turmoil we were in. But the team was never made the way he had envisioned, so I’m not sure what his role really was the last couple of years. Anyways I wish Burke well with his family in the future.
 
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Anglesmith

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I think Burke is a good leader and a smart man, I think he also commands respect from his peers. He should definitely go into the HHOF. I think he was also the key force behind turning the Flames around from the turmoil we were in. But the team was never made the way he had envisioned, so I’m not sure what his role really was the last couple of years. Anyways I wish Burke well with his family in the future.

I'm not really sure the Flames were in any sort of real turmoil. They just had to rebuild; that happens when you chase the playoffs with an aging core for a while. But the rebuild had already started when Burke was hired, and most of the moves that would bring this team back up from rock bottom had already happened.

I think definitely it was an important hire in what it represented for the organization: taking hockey decisions out of the hands of non-hockey people. But whether that was Burke or someone else I don't think was massively important. It's just good that it happened. His actual body of work during his short stint as GM wasn't anything spectacularly important either, as he mostly just stood pat while waiting for a new GM.
 
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Johnny Hoxville

The Return of a Legend
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Before D. Sutter was fired, there was lots of turmoil. Multiple articles suggested there was a dark cloud that loomed over the Flames and Darryl and his own brother, the head coach reportedly never talked.

Then Feaster came into power, on an interm basis initially, made lots of controversial quotes, multiple controversial trades and made a hugely controversial decision in signing ROR, which potentially likely would have ended in catastrophe. Despite anyone saying the league would have sided with the Flames, there is zero evidence to support such a claim. In fact all the league has ever been on record of saying was that the Flames never called the league office.

Burke, who was immensely respected in the hockey world gave instant credibility back to the Flames. Quite frankly I think that was his greatest contribution along with hiring Treliving.

The league perception of the Flames was that the team was in turmoil, which is why Feaster was fired. These are all facts.
 

Anglesmith

Setting up the play?
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Before D. Sutter was fired, there was lots of turmoil. Multiple articles suggested there was a dark cloud that loomed over the Flames and Darryl and his own brother, the head coach reportedly never talked.

Then Feaster came into power, on an interm basis initially, made lots of controversial quotes, multiple controversial trades and made a hugely controversial decision in signing ROR, which potentially likely would have ended in catastrophe. Despite anyone saying the league would have sided with the Flames, there is zero evidence to support such a claim. In fact all the league has ever been on record of saying was that the Flames never called the league office.

Burke, who was immensely respected in the hockey world gave instant credibility back to the Flames. Quite frankly I think that was his greatest contribution along with hiring Treliving.

The league perception of the Flames was that the team was in turmoil, which is why Feaster was fired. These are all facts.

Meh. As much notoriety as there was with Feaster, there was with Burke, too. Burke has a lot of detractors around the league, it's not some big love in. The process of turning around the organization spanned both of those men's tenures with the Flames, and more of the positive influential player moves happened with Feaster than did with Burke. A lot of what you're talking about is just pure optics, and optics don't have that significant a bearing on reality. The Bruins were a team in turmoil when they hired Sweeney and he traded away Dougie Hamilton, for instance.

The big positive change was the restructuring of the front office that happened with the Burke hiring.
 

Johnny Hoxville

The Return of a Legend
Jul 15, 2006
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Meh. As much notoriety as there was with Feaster, there was with Burke, too. Burke has a lot of detractors around the league, it's not some big love in. The process of turning around the organization spanned both of those men's tenures with the Flames, and more of the positive influential player moves happened with Feaster than did with Burke. A lot of what you're talking about is just pure optics, and optics don't have that significant a bearing on reality. The Bruins were a team in turmoil when they hired Sweeney and he traded away Dougie Hamilton, for instance.

The big positive change was the restructuring of the front office that happened with the Burke hiring.

I don’t deny that Feaster made positive moves in his time here, but it’s misleading to suggest public perception of your franchise in the NHL isn’t of vital importance. Having competent ownership and management is crucial for long term success.

I’m not going to get into all the roster moves of Feaster but he wasn’t good at trades (awful IMO), he almost signed Richards to a horrific deal and offered more money than the Rangers did for him. Then luckily the ROR deal fell through, because had it not we would have potentially lost out on the player and Monahan.

I know you’re going to say these things never happened so why worry about it, but it clearly illustrates the recklessness of Uncle Jay and turmoil surrounding this team. For that, I was grateful that Burkie came on.
 

Fig

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I think many of the changes that came in after Burke showed up are glossed over or understated.

- We had a poor reputation for getting value in trades due to the prior GMs. Burke fixed that with the Cammellari situation. That's an inexpensive fix. Trade values we received started going up drastically after Burke ousted Feaster and Weisbrod.
- To add to trades, I think Treliving or Burke once mentioned in an interview that both of them are on the phones near TDL and thus can navigate the trade environment more efficiently and effectively than if it was Treliving only. This probably helps with getting good prices on trades.
- Culture. Is it just me, or did the Flames really start to do significantly more community related activities after Burked joined? Or am I remembering wrong and it's about the same as before?

- Ownership meddling must have been significant if they had D Sutter playing GM and coach. Feaster doing his Feaster thing was likely the last straw and probably caused ownership to step in and "help" but instead it ended up messing up things royally. I think ownership was smart enough to realize they needed to fix the gap between ownership and management and hired Burke as the POHO. I think Burke as a buffer is highly understated as a role. He'd stave off ownership so that Treliving and co could do their jobs and with Treliving's help, they pushed ownership back in their corner so that management could do their jobs, rather than be puppets of ownership who didn't trust management and didn't understand hockey management. I think that's a resounding success for Burke.

- In Treliving's first season, the mandate was playoffs. Even with a roster that was considered fantastic for joining the CMD sweepstakes. I can't imagine all of that being Burke's mandate, but ownership's mandate.
- Ownership seemed cheap on management. I can only imagine the Treliving was (and still is?) paid less than the typical GM out there as a newbie GM. I've also said the same about coaches in other novels past. But it seems like the pocket book is slowly loosening. I don't think Treliving successfully gets ownership to do this without Burke.

- The farm has been cleaned up and improved immensely. I don't think it's fully Burke on this one as it always felt more like a Treliving pet project due to his history, but I wonder if Treliving being able to do this project was also hugely in part to Burke vouching for it and helping to navigate the process to get ownership approval.
- Insulation of Treliving. Sure, we often discuss how Burke is in front of media, but I think one thing that's very missed is that Treliving didn't have to stand front and centre for things like the arena fiasco and the Wideman incident. He could learn from a relatively sheltered but front row seat of the situations.

Whatever Burke was doing probably wasn't insignificant. The dude always looked surly, exhausted and red. I am also curious to know if it was a mutual parting in the sense that Burke walked away for his own health. He really didn't look very healthy at times. Treliving has some good options to insulate him going forward such as Maloney, Conroy and Pascale who have likely all learned a lot under Burke as well as been given the ability to do their jobs without ownership meddling. But I think it's all due to the ground that Burke developed and paved to allow these guys this freedom to do their jobs and do it well.
 

Johnny Hoxville

The Return of a Legend
Jul 15, 2006
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Part of me wonders actually if Burke was relieved of the majority of his duties after his public argument with that fan occurred regarding our arena. King was quick to comment on they how they love Brian’s passion, but ever since that transpired, I don’t recall Burke having much involvement with the team.

Maybe this “resignation” was somewhat agreed mutually agreed upon shortly after that event.
 

Anglesmith

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I don’t deny that Feaster made positive moves in his time here, but it’s misleading to suggest public perception of your franchise in the NHL isn’t of vital importance. Having competent ownership and management is crucial for long term success.

Yes, but competent management and public perception are very loosely correlated. George McPhee, Don Sweeney, Steve Yzerman, and Joe Sakic all had negative public perception at various times in recent years. Hasn't hurt those franchises one iota.

Burke's hiring definitely helped the competent management thing because of the subtraction of Ken King. But the team was already turning around, and probably would've been fine.
 

DFF

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Being a head scout is like being a baseball player. Even the best ones will have high failure rates. It's hard to judge a head scout given every head scout has a couple of these instances happen every year where they pick a bust and a star is picked soon after.

You're right that the GM usually is close to blameless for drafts, but at the same time, it's hard to ignore the distinct Brian Burke flavour to some of those picks. Is it a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe the GM gives the scouts instructions on how to weight different parts of players' games. :dunno:


Sure the draft is a hit and miss but I am sure winning teams have good scouts in the long run, Flames in the 80s, Wings in the 90s and lately the Pens, Hawks, Jets...etc
GM influences what type of players they want but IMO, it's up to the scouts to find that kind of players otherwise they can just read the hockey news and pick? lol
 

Johnny Hoxville

The Return of a Legend
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Yeah honestly I wouldn’t be sad to see Todd Button fired. He’s had way to many misses and overall our track record isn’t very good. The Flames do better drafting in later rounds it seems. Any 1st round picks we’ve made from 13 - 30th, 80% of the time is usually a miss. That is why this team has so many holes. Imagine how our roster would look if Sven, Poirier and Klimchuk had all panned out and were impact players for us. Guys would be slotted correctly and we probably would have been a contender like the Jets this year.

Part of the problem is our development for sure but it’s a major issue and really the biggest crutch this franchise has. Always having to turn to the FA well is how we landed in the Raymond and Brouwer situations.
 

Anglesmith

Setting up the play?
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Yeah honestly I wouldn’t be sad to see Todd Button fired. He’s had way to many misses and overall our track record isn’t very good. The Flames do better drafting in later rounds it seems. Any 1st round picks we’ve made from 13 - 30th, 80% of the time is usually a miss. That is why this team has so many holes. Imagine how our roster would look if Sven, Poirier and Klimchuk had all panned out and were impact players for us. Guys would be slotted correctly and we probably would have been a contender like the Jets this year.

Part of the problem is our development for sure but it’s a major issue and really the biggest crutch this franchise has. Always having to turn to the FA well is how we landed in the Raymond and Brouwer situations.

People point to Klimchuk/Poirier, but look at the picks around them. Andre Burakovsky and Shea Theodore and a whole bunch of nothing. :dunno:
 

Johnny Hoxville

The Return of a Legend
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Here’s our last 10 years:

2008 - Greg Nemisz
2009 - Tim Erixon
2010 - Traded to Arizona
2011 - Sven Baertschi
2012 - Mark Jankowski
2013 - Monahan, Poirier, Klimchuk
2014 - Bennett
2015 - Traded to Boston
2016 - Tkachuk
2017 - Valimaki

Nemisz and Erixon were flat out bad picks, so our drafting has definitely gotten better for sure since then. Sven should have been a bluechipper, but the both the player and organization played a role in poor development. The book is still out on Janks, whom I like but I REALLY wanted Tuevo. I’m not going to discuss Monahan, Bennett or Tkachuk, because all those picks were no brainers. And despite his struggles, the Flames made the right pick in Bennett. Valimaki looks good so far, but not landing on Poirier and Klimchuk hurt.

I agree there weren’t a ton of guys who panned out in 2013, but Burak and Hartman on this team would sure look good. I remember to really wanting Hartman as he drew comparisons to Mike Richards. Honestly I blame our development as much as anything.
 

Dack

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I honestly think a huge part of why we never develop anyone is because they are never given the opportunity to take the ball and run with it.

I look at a guy like Jake Debrusk and who had a worse draft +1 and draft +2 then Poirier and started his draft +3 in the NHL. He looks to be a 2nd line player. Maybe with more than a 6 game stint to prove himself Poirier could've been a gritty third liner.

Maybe Klimchuk has the potential to be a cheap Frolik but it's not like we'll ever know seeing as he's played about 8 NHL minutes in his draft + 5 despite being a useful and responsible player in the AHL.

Even Mangiapane who actually did tear up the AHL got a 10 game stint the majority of which he spent glued to Stajan. FFS Gaudreau didn't produce when he was double shifted on Stajans line. The Flames constantly set their young guys up for failure then blame it on them.

Look at the random finds the contenders have from guys who never had a precedence of being as good as they have been in the NHL.

Bryan Rust
Best college season was 33 points in 40 games and he was a 0.4-0.5 point per game AHLer for two years. Gets brought up and brings a slightly higher level of production in the NHL.

Jake Guentzel
A prospect who had a solid college career rips up the AHL (with a slightly higher points/game then Mangiapane) they bring him up and he looks to be a 50-60 point winger who has great chemistry with Sid and steps up come playoff time.

I'll update with more examples later but I think you get the point.
 
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DFF

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I honestly think a huge part of why we never develop anyone is because they are never given the opportunity to take the ball and run with it.

I look at a guy like Jake Debrusk and who had a worse draft +1 and draft +2 then Poirier and started his draft +3 in the NHL. He looks to be a 2nd line player. Maybe with more than a 6 game stint to prove himself Poirier could've been a gritty third liner.

Maybe Klimchuk has the potential to be a cheap Frolik but it's not like we'll ever know seeing as he's played about 8 NHL minutes in his draft + 5 despite being a useful and responsible player in the AHL.

Even Mangiapane who actually did tear up the AHL got a 10 game stint the majority of which he spent glued to Stajan. FFS Gaudreau didn't produce when he was double shifted on Stajans line. The Flames constantly set their young guys up for failure then blame it on them.

Look at the random finds the contenders have from guys who never had a precedence of being as good as they have been in the NHL.

Bryan Rust
Best college season was 33 points in 40 games and he was a 0.4-0.5 point per game AHLer for two years. Gets brought up and brings a slightly higher level of production in the NHL.

Jake Guentzel
A prospect who had a solid college career rips up the AHL (with a slightly higher points/game then Mangiapane) they bring him up and he looks to be a 50-60 point winger who has great chemistry with Sid and steps up come playoff time.

I'll update with more examples later but I think you get the point.


If that is true, shouldnt we see former Flames draft picks flourishing around the league?
 

Dack

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If that is true, shouldnt we see former Flames draft picks flourishing around the league?
How many of them have actually been given a spot on an NHL team? I'm not talking about the Sutter days when we drafted grinders. I'm talking about our recent non awful picks.

I'd say Baertschi fits this too and he just put up 29 points in 53 games.
 

Dack

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How many of them were actually good enough to do so in the first place?
I'm not sure because they've never been given an opportunity. Lots of young players around the league are playing decently in the AHL and doing even better in the NHL.
 

Fig

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Dec 15, 2014
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Yeah honestly I wouldn’t be sad to see Todd Button fired. He’s had way to many misses and overall our track record isn’t very good. The Flames do better drafting in later rounds it seems. Any 1st round picks we’ve made from 13 - 30th, 80% of the time is usually a miss. That is why this team has so many holes. Imagine how our roster would look if Sven, Poirier and Klimchuk had all panned out and were impact players for us. Guys would be slotted correctly and we probably would have been a contender like the Jets this year.

Part of the problem is our development for sure but it’s a major issue and really the biggest crutch this franchise has. Always having to turn to the FA well is how we landed in the Raymond and Brouwer situations.

I maybe see the point of this, except for the fact that the misses in the first round being mentioned involved a lot of GM override and development as mentioned. Feaster/Weisbrod and Sutter are the ones to blame there. Based on the interviews, the scouts just organize the list, sort it based on GM mandated criteria and the GMs generally draft in the first and second rounds based on the sorted lists. It's in the later rounds where the GMs may let the scouts do their own thing, but first round busts are usually on the GM if the pick is not a BPA. Smith, MacDonale and Kanzig also felt like reaches based on the mandate (likely Burke) at that time. I don't think that's a Button issue, that's a GM override or incorrect mandate issue (ie: Big and strong vs small and skilled).

If anything, there's a story where Button was excited about both Kucherov and Gaudreau and kept them off the ranking sheets to hide their interest. He was told Feaster would take one of the two in the later rounds as they couldn't afford to gamble on both. When Kucherov was taken after Wotherspoon, he had to sweat it out until they had a pick to nab Gaudreau.

However, I believe Treliving and Co have been more willing to let the scouts do their own thing in earlier rounds and has allowed the scouts to take some swings at the fences. Kylington is perhaps an example of this and Andersson was supposedly not high on a lot of other team's lists either.
 

Dack

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Jun 16, 2014
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I maybe see the point of this, except for the fact that the misses in the first round being mentioned involved a lot of GM override and development as mentioned. Feaster/Weisbrod and Sutter are the ones to blame there. Based on the interviews, the scouts just organize the list, sort it based on GM mandated criteria and the GMs generally draft in the first and second rounds based on the sorted lists. It's in the later rounds where the GMs may let the scouts do their own thing, but first round busts are usually on the GM if the pick is not a BPA. Smith, MacDonale and Kanzig also felt like reaches based on the mandate (likely Burke) at that time. I don't think that's a Button issue, that's a GM override or incorrect mandate issue (ie: Big and strong vs small and skilled).

If anything, there's a story where Button was excited about both Kucherov and Gaudreau and kept them off the ranking sheets to hide their interest. He was told Feaster would take one of the two in the later rounds as they couldn't afford to gamble on both. When Kucherov was taken after Wotherspoon, he had to sweat it out until they had a pick to nab Gaudreau.

However, I believe Treliving and Co have been more willing to let the scouts do their own thing in earlier rounds and has allowed the scouts to take some swings at the fences. Kylington is perhaps an example of this and Andersson was supposedly not high on a lot of other team's lists either.
So glad we snagged T spoon instead of gambling on Kucherov.

The decision making there seems so odd to me. You find these 2 guys who you think have star upside but aren't very likely to reach it (they both did). What did they see in Wotherspoon and Granlund for the matter that made them pick them? I hope they now realize star potential > safety especially on the 2nd day of the draft where in reality there are no safe picks.
 
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Johnny Hoxville

The Return of a Legend
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So glad we snagged T spoon instead of gambling on Kucherov.

The decision making there seems so odd to me. You find these 2 guys who you think have star upside but aren't very likely to reach it (they both did). What did they see in Wotherspoon and Granlund for the matter that made them pick them? I hope they now realize star potential > safety especially on the 2nd day of the draft where in reality there are no safe picks.

Yeah for the life of me I don’t know why we took Granlund over Kuch. I mean, I know they thought he was gonna fall, but if you like a guy, just take him. That’s a risky game that really backfired.
 
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Mr Snrub

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Oct 12, 2016
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Finally seeing Burkie on the panel for CBC, he's pretty entertaining.
 

DFF

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Feb 28, 2002
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I maybe see the point of this, except for the fact that the misses in the first round being mentioned involved a lot of GM override and development as mentioned. Feaster/Weisbrod and Sutter are the ones to blame there. Based on the interviews, the scouts just organize the list, sort it based on GM mandated criteria and the GMs generally draft in the first and second rounds based on the sorted lists. It's in the later rounds where the GMs may let the scouts do their own thing, but first round busts are usually on the GM if the pick is not a BPA. Smith, MacDonale and Kanzig also felt like reaches based on the mandate (likely Burke) at that time. I don't think that's a Button issue, that's a GM override or incorrect mandate issue (ie: Big and strong vs small and skilled).

If anything, there's a story where Button was excited about both Kucherov and Gaudreau and kept them off the ranking sheets to hide their interest. He was told Feaster would take one of the two in the later rounds as they couldn't afford to gamble on both. When Kucherov was taken after Wotherspoon, he had to sweat it out until they had a pick to nab Gaudreau.

However, I believe Treliving and Co have been more willing to let the scouts do their own thing in earlier rounds and has allowed the scouts to take some swings at the fences. Kylington is perhaps an example of this and Andersson was supposedly not high on a lot of other team's lists either.


You may have a point except the guy has been around for 20 yrs, surviving numerous GMs and the Flames have been at the bottom of the league for most of his tenure. GMs may have overrided some picks but they still pick from his list, it's not like the GM scout the players themselves or pick from the tabloids

BTW, the fans always get excited with the new picks...eventually in the Flames case they turned into busts...not too long ago people were wetting their pants on Poirrer, Klimchuck, Wotherspoon, Seiloff....
 

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