What's Wrong With The Calgary Flames?

Matchsticks and Gasoline has their end of season review up, and it ain't very pretty.

For me the money quote came in their assessment of Darryl Sutter's season;

"For a few years, I thought he had a plan that worked both short term and long term - have a core group of players and fill in with interchangeable parts at reasonable salary. Even after the Jokinen trade last year, I thought the plan was generally intact because Jokinen didn't have a long term contract. But this year he blew up all semblance of flexibility with the Kotalik/Staios trades and the Stajan signing. Was this short term thinking or long term thinking? Probably neither. And with a locked in roster that just missed the playoffs, one decent prospect available right now (Backlund), maybe two or three prospects available in the next couple of years, and a lack of draft picks…well, this is a plan that I'm having trouble getting behind."

For me much of the reason we missed the playoffs can be attributed to Dion Phaneuf actually getting worse in his own zone, to become the league's fourth worst even strength defenseman (using Corsi and quality of opposition stats, worse we find he also played a lot of minutes against an opponents soft parade or 2nd line). Rumors of a dressing room in distress were fueled by reports of shouting matches between Phaneuf and Sutter, all of which culminated in a whopping 10 game losing streak that took them from near the top of the division to fighting for their playoff lives. At the very moment the streak ended (because you never make a trade when you are losing or it looks like you panicked) Phaneuf was immediately traded.

There were warning signs in the off-season if you read into the tea leaves correctly. Sutter's pursuit and signing of Jay Bouwmeester gave the Flames everything they were hoping Phaneuf could be; a shutdown monster you can deploy against a teams best player, an offensively versatile power play guy, and above all, a safe in his own end minute muncher. With so much money committed to their defense corps (Regher, Phaneuf and Bouwmeester all eat heavy cake) they were forced to hope that Jokinen found a way to mesh offensively with the team.

He didn't. Nor does it appear to be for lack of effort in workouts or practice by Jokinen - if nothing else he apparently has a good work ethic. But the Gary Leeman disease he contracted after he arrived never fully left the Big Finn, and worse, his lack of chemistry with Iginla sucked all the life out of the team's offense.

The return on Phaneuf hinges for me on whether White can be coaxed into an extension, and whether Stajan can fit into be a contributing member of the top six, or really thrive as our third. I'm not as bothered by his contract as the boys at M&G are, he's a useful multi-line guy who reminds me a little of Stu Barnes, and his contract is way cheaper than that of Horcoff who is a similar player. All in all, I'm most disappointed that there wasn't a deal to get Calgary a decent forward prospect to help feed a mostly broken pipeline, and that we had to part with Keith Aulie in the deal to boot.

But its the Jokinen trade that really licks. Calgary threw a 1st and Lombardi to the Coyotes for Joker, in the hope that he would be the top line power pivot the team has lacked since Nieuwendyk (who as you recall was traded to Dallas for Iginla - ergo, Iggy has never played with a top caliber center). The return on the investment in Jokinen is Kotalik and his terrible contract and Chris Higgins and his terrible ankle. For Higgins to count moving forward, we would have to sign him. If we had simply played out the string, worst case scenario is we still miss the playoffs but we have Jokinen's cap space to use for signing players. Instead we have a contract so bad you have to seriously consider sending it to the minors to rid yourselves of the cap hit. Any time you are better off without a player than with a player - well that says something.

Which brings me to the worst trade Sutter made, acquiring Steve Staios for Aaron Johnson (filler) and a 3rd rnd pick. Hands up all those Gms who think Steve Staios is worth a 3rd rnd pick? Now consider that he traded Boyd FOR A 4TH ROUND PICK, and you come to the inescapable conclusion that Sutter has lost his mind. Getting Bowmeester at the start of the year? Genius. Trading for Staios at the end of the year? Mind blowing.

Makes you wonder if there isn't a pod somewhere in Darryl's office.