So the Flames are back in the clutches of their implacable foe. Despite Brad Treliving’s efforts, the club has fallen back into the West’s middle class. Just missing the playoffs is not necessarily a disaster, but for this organization, given what they have and what they risked to get here, it is.
At the time of writing, Treliving is without an extension and the club is without a GM. Many of the team’s veteran, pending free agents were non-commital at best when asked if they are interested in re-signing. The cap budget for next year has already been spent.
In short, there’s no clear path forward. The key questions right now aren’t even strategic or tactical, they’re existential.
Here's the true challenge the org is facing this off-season: they need to give the general fanbase some reason to cheer for this team again. This season was a disaster from a lot of angles, but the primary issue from a business perspective is that it engendered a huge wave of disillusionment and apathy.
I've personally never seen fans check out of a season en masse like this past season, at least not with the club fighting for playoffs up until game 81.
Unfortunately, the on-ice product was staid and boring. The hearts and guts of the club were ripped out last summer and replaced by mercenaries who immediately fell on their faces. Practically every one of the org's small handful of exciting, NHL-ready prospects was sidelined, ignored, or disrespected to one degree or another. The head coach spent a lot of time sneering either at management, the media, or both, even as his efforts resulted in failure rather than success.
One thing Trelving generally did well is find ways to pique fan interest. He made headliner trades and landed notable UFAs (often not a good contract, but at least it kept fans engaged). It's likely why ownership likes him and (according to rumours anyways) wants him to stay. Even last off-season, Treliving turned a series of gut punches into intrigue. The team lost two superstars in rapid succession, but the fans were on the edge of their seats waiting for games to start in October nevertheless.
But now the franchise seems rudderless. The core is aging and the team is built around mercs who underperformed and aren't happy here. Long-standing pillars like Backlund and Lindholm are looking to leave. The team is so cap constrained there is no apparent path to improvement.
Whoever lands the GM gig - even if it's Treliving - will have one mission: get the fans interested again.
You need at least one of a handful of things to effortlessly market a hockey team:
A legit, contender-ready roster
Exciting/bluechip prospects
Notable acquisitions (UFA/trade)
With one of these factors, you can build a credible narrative of hope and interest for a fanbase. If you aren't #1, then you need #2 or #3 to put some sizzle on the steak.
Treliving pulled off #3 last year and managed to create a new contender-ready narrative. The magic trick didn't work, unfortunately, so CGY's management is facing an off-season where the team - for now - satisfies none of the above requirements.
The Flames have been eerily quiet since the end of the year. For now, I suspect a drastic change in management will be the fan interest creator. Upon which the club will stake a narrative of regime change re-invigorating the existing roster. The change will be spun as an effort to correct what went wrong this year so they can become the contenders they are supposed to be.
There’s a non-trivial chance that drastic change will involve Sutter ascending to either GM or Team President. Some (many) may consider this a disaster given how things played out the last time he helmed the org.
If Sutter indeed takes over, then the question will be: can he learn from what went wrong both last year and the last time he was in the big chair?
Sutter's obstinance and his taciturn demeanour, especially in the face of disappointment, are at once his strengths but also his greatest weakness. He has a penchant for thinking he's the smartest guy in the room at any given time but modern NHL management just doesn't work like that.
A rigid top-down, military-like org structure means information only flows one way: down. In complex environments with long and uncertain feedback loops, the best managers hire people who are smarter than them, at least in some very specific way, and they flatten the org so information flows freely back and forth between departments.
If your management is organized around someone who is seen as a lone charismatic leader, a person no one can question, then things eventually devolve into what we saw last time around - with the big guy stepping on landmines in strange ways because no one's allowed to contradict or question him.
If Darryl Sutter fails upwards, the near future of the Flames will depend on an old dog learning new tricks. Sutter’s one of the best NHL coaches of all time, a highly decorated, tremendously accomplished Hockey Man. But the difficulty of the job and the complexity of the task will demand evolution, not obstinance.
Really, for any three of the resurrections you are proposing, it means Dutter needs to be jettisoned to the confines of a Viking quarter acre, otherwise it is going to be status quo until the Rockies erode into sand dunes.