GDT: FLAMES (27-21-12) vs. BRUINS (46-8-5) | 7 p.m. MT | TV: Sportsnet | RADIO: Sportsnet 960 The FAN

[super6646]

I think blaming Sutter is silly, and I'm not an apologist

Last year's Flames were at 7th in 5v5 scoring at 2.97 with the best top line in the NHL in Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk and an elite #1 defenseman in Kylington
This year's Flames are 10th in 5v5 scoring at 2.72 without Kylington, Gaudreau, or Tkachuk. Huberdeau, Kadri, and Weegar are each massive downgrades.

This team's shitty powerplay is due to the personel.
This team's shitty goaltending is due to the personel. Not just Markstrom and Vladar, but also the fact that we lost our top defenseman, who erased odd-man rushes single-handedly with his elite, impeccable checking.

Is Sutter doing the best job possible? Maybe not. Considering the goaltending struggles, maybe another coach would have changes strategies to collapse to the middle more at the expense of possession, but I don't think that's the answer, it's a band-aid. I won't fault Sutter for not applying a band-aid.

Do I think Sutter could do a better job yes and his mismanagement of Ruzicka and Phillips is beyond frustrating but this season overall is not on him.

Tre just put together a roster with zero chemistry.

Why was our 4th line matched up against the leaf’s top 6 last night? I’m also skeptical a top 10 scoring es team doesn’t have the personnel to run a decent pp…

Lot of self-inflicted wounds here. If the goal of hockey is to spam corsi, we might as well have never fired glue gun. The product is boring, it sucks, and we aren’t winning. Brad can get a load of shit any day, but the top 9 at the end of the day is probably the deepest I can remember in recent history in terms of overall depth.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Why was our 4th line matched up against the leaf’s top 6 last night? I’m also skeptical a top 10 scoring es team doesn’t have the personnel to run a decent pp…

I would rebut that with:

What evidence do you have that "our 4th line matched up against the opponent's top 6 last night" had a significant impact on the standings?

I wouldn't make the exact same decisions Darryl has made but that doesn't mean he's this team's Achilles heel either.

This team is top ten in scoring because it has three second lines.

What it lacks of a first line.

Lot of self-inflicted wounds here. If the goal of hockey is to spam corsi, we might as well have never fired glue gun. The product is boring, it sucks, and we aren’t winning. Brad can get a load of shit any day, but the top 9 at the end of the day is probably the deepest I can remember in recent history in terms of overall depth.

Not one forward or defenseman on this year's roster has ever been the best forward or defenseman on a playoff team.

Not Huberdeau (Barkov).
Not Lindholm (Gaudreau, Tkachuk).
Not Kadri (MacKinnon/Rantanen, Matthews/Marner).
Not Toffoli (Kopitar, Carter, Suzuki, ).
Not Andersson (Kylington)

Think about it.

Every single player on PP1 is playing one slot too high.

As for your corsi comment:

Gulutzan was fired because he was mishandling Sam Bennett playing him as 4LW, even when playing Nick f***ing Shore at 2C while simultaneously missing the playoffs. The current Flames don't even have a top five overall pick to be mishandled.

Gulutzan was an idiot who sabatoged the team.

Sutter is just a coach who isn't squeezing the most out of the team. Now Sutter did royally f*** up his handling of Kylington two years ago, but we saw last year that he made the correction, albeit late

 

[super6646]

I would rebut that with:

What evidence do you have that "our 4th line matched up against the opponent's top 6 last night" had a significant impact on the standings?

I wouldn't make the exact same decisions Darryl has made but that doesn't mean he's this team's Achilles heel either.

This team is top ten in scoring because it has three second lines.

What it lacks of a first line.



Not one forward or defenseman on this year's roster has ever been the best forward or defenseman on a playoff team.

Not Huberdeau (Barkov).
Not Lindholm (Gaudreau, Tkachuk).
Not Kadri (MacKinnon/Rantanen, Matthews/Marner).
Not Toffoli (Kopitar, Carter, Suzuki, ).
Not Andersson (Kylington)

Think about it.

Every single player on PP1 is playing one slot too high.

As for your corsi comment:

Gulutzan was fired because he was mishandling Sam Bennett playing him as 4LW, even when playing Nick f***ing Shore at 2C while simultaneously missing the playoffs. The current Flames don't even have a top five overall pick to be mishandled.

Gulutzan was an idiot who sabatoged the team.

Sutter is just a coach who isn't squeezing the most out of the team. Now Sutter did royally f*** up his handling of Kylington two years ago, but we saw last year that he made the correction, albeit late

I mean the 4th line was out for one of the two goals against last night and constantly got caved in. In a 2-1 match that lineup decision cost the flames dearly. Again I can’t hope to extrapolate throughout an entire season, but it was certainly a momentum shifter in one game, and with how many one goal losses we’ve had this year I’m confident in the assessment it’s cost us points.

I also strongly disagree our pp1 is filled with players “slotted too high”. Case in point, huberdeau who led the panthers in pp production last year. Kadri also had regular pp1 time with Colorado too last season if memory serves me right.

The 2017-18 flames missed the playoffs because of a horrific string of injuries to our lineup in a crucial stretch of games (monahan, tkachuk, Brodie, Hamilton, hamonic, smith, Gaudreau wasn’t hurt but his dad had a heart attack), something sutter has not had the misfortune with. We can argue all day how gulutzan wrecked the team or how Sam Bennett was destroyed, but I’m certainly not seeing a better product now. And for every player that’s done well (kylington, Pelletier) we have cases of gross misuse too (see ruzicka and valimaki).

It just seems hard for me to buy that this team lacks the ability to ice a good top line when huberdeau was a ppg player in Florida for half a decade…

 

[MM917]

But we have zero guys who should be on a top line on a good team so why would we think we can ice a quality top line?