ScorchStack Issue #29 - As Random As A 2010 Internet Post, And Just As Grating
Hey did you hear the news
Something big happened for the Flames last week. You already know all about it and don’t need us to explain it, but we will anyway. Jakob Pelletier had a birthday. Happy Birthday, Jakob!
Maybe once we’ve exhausted coverage of that big news, we will get into some other stuff.
What’s inside?
We say goodbye to accidental head coach Geoff Ward…
… and hello (again) to Darryl Sutter, potential Dinosaur, but not in the way you might think.
Darryl Sutter is a farmboy, which raises the important question: what is a farm? Investigative reporter Ramz finds out.
Speaking of farms, how about a report on the farm team? Wow, this ScorchStack issue has a lot of synergies.
The draft lottery is changing again, and hey that might affect the Flames this year. The solution? Get rid of the thing.
Since last week
I don’t really remember what happened in hockey besides a Dillon Dube hat trick. I think the Flames lost twice but ended up .500 on points percentage. I guess that’s not too bad, but who cares, because it’s not Sutter time yet, and those games don’t count.
Oh yeah, it’s also Sutter time. You can relive the excitement and instant reaction here.
ScorchStack #28 was published under the nihilistic haze that nothing would change and nothing would ever get better. The Flames flipped the script on us, but hey it’s still a good read.
Big Monday Thing! Big Monday Thing!
The Geoff Ward Retrospective
We say goodbye to an utterly lost and clueless head coach, who also somehow won a playoff round and was arguably seconds away from winning two. Like his entire tenure, none of it makes sense.
by Christian (@decayinwtheboys)
The Flames have employed a lot of jamokes as head coaches. For example: Pierre Page, Don Hay, Greg Gilbert, Jim Playfair, and Glen Gulutzan. All of these guys were under-experienced no-name hires, above their head, and quickly flamed out of the league. If they were a cereal, they would all be “Honey Flavoured O’s” disguised to look like normal Cheerios.
I would put Geoff Ward on that list, but there’s a major difference between Ward and the rest of these Great Valu! coaches: these Great Valu! guys wanted to be head coaches. I don’t know exactly how the hiring process works in the NHL, but I imagine they were offered the opportunity, did the research and determined that they were a perfect fit, said the right words in the hours-long interviews, did their best to get the job, and tried their hardest to keep it.
Ward got the job because his superior got canceled mid-game, and then a pandemic wiped out the NHL’s main revenue stream and eliminated the competition. With limited money for the Flames to spend, the thought process was boiled down to “he got us just as far as the other guy, so if we spend the money on the team, they’ll go further.”
So what happens when you let a guy who is clearly in over his head and got his job by mistake continue to do the job for which he is clearly not suited for? Let’s look at this handy visual metaphor:
At least that’s my theory. The Flames’ offseason reflects that, they are cheap enough to make it plausible, and they apparently had the option to call up Darryl Sutter on their emergency line whenever they wanted to. They didn’t, they preferred the guy who became coach of this team accidentally and watched it fail in a spectacular yet somewhat surprising way.
Ward came to Calgary an “associate” coach, a fancy term that doesn’t really mean anything other than slightly higher pay and a theoretical spot in the coaching chain of command. The only reason this was his title is because it was the condition for getting him out of his contract with New Jersey. His job was to fix a pretty lackluster power play, which was a low bar to clear given that Dave Cameron was the previous guy.
Up until late November 2019, that paragraph would’ve been the only thing under “Geoff Ward” in a History of the Calgary Flames book. He was here to do one thing until either the Flames cleaned house or someone else wanted to pay him slightly more money to do one thing elsewhere. There didn’t seem to be some grand plan for Geoff Ward other than to help out until it was time to move on.
You know what happened next. Bill Peters is outed as an awful racist and resigns. Congrats Geoff, you’re the coach now. Here’s a mediocre, fundamentally flawed team that’s started the season flat and is already way behind schedule to hit the expectations set of them. Also, now they’re the centre of the NHL’s attention for the last reason you’d want to be. By the way one of your players nearly died at practice a few days ago. Well, have fun.
But, against all odds, they then went on a seven-game win streak. Not only did the team start picking up points on ice, they actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. They were playing music at practice! Players said they felt closer and more engaged! Ward not only seemed like a non-psychopath, he seemed like a genuinely good guy! A winning head coach who was fun to cheer on and everyone seemed happy to play for? Things weren’t miserable? What a time to be alive.
This was the high point of the Geoff Ward tenure. It never really got much better than that. Those seven wins were ultimately Pyrrhic victories, giving management the idea that Ward was cut out to coach this team to NHL dominance, and not a guy who managed to pick up seven lucky wins at a convenient time (furthermore, two of those wins were against Buffalo, one against Ottawa, one against L.A). It’s not hard to imagine that had the Flames gone .500 over that stretch, there would be less justification to remove the interim tag.
After reaching that high, the Flames took a steep dive into the general inconsistencies that plagued the Geoff Ward Era. The 7-0 run was followed up by a 2-5-1 run in their next eight games to close out 2019. To open 2020, they went 6-2 leading up to the All-Star break. After the break, 3-4-1. Just rollercoaster shit at all times, not knowing which team was going to show up any given night.
I think part of that is just the chaotic nature of hockey, but I’ve often thought that hockey coaching is the art of doing your best to push that chaos in your favour. Ward could only contribute to it (I will admit that as someone who values nothing but chaos at all times, I did admire him for that) with his generally bizarre approach to hockey.
The lines were as random as a 2010 internet post, and just as grating. Does anyone remember Gaudreau-Monahan-Backlund? That was an experiment for a few games. Backlund went on a tear right after being moved back to centre, by the way. Buddy Robinson also immediately got a spin on the top line for a few games despite having not played in the NHL since 2016-17. Gaudreau played with Lucic and Ryan for spells. There was once an all centre line of Dube-Monahan-Backlund. He never came close to figuring out what Sam Bennett was (third line checking winger) but did his damndest to try (first line RW, powerplay and penalty kill, center).
Ward had two pretty good goalies and had no clue when to start or sit them, much less pull them (ahead of ourselves here, but pulling Talbot for Rittich and then putting Talbot back in? In a playoff elimination game?). He regularly ran four lines regardless of game situation, and only shortened his bench when he took the unnecessary step of putting Zac Rinaldo or other complete plugs in the lineup just to give them two minutes of ice time, all in the first period. Yes, that’s right: the only thing that could stop Geoff Ward’s bad decisions were Geoff Ward’s bad decisions.
There was no predictability to any of this. Lines that were gelling would be broken up if the Flames went down a goal and didn’t immediately come back. Lines that clearly didn’t work stuck together for much longer than they should. Guys were healthy scratched for no discernible reason. The flustered, knee-jerk reactions to wins and losses (both during and after games) further reinforced the point that he had no idea what he was doing, and eventually it panned out in the boxscores. Check out this stretch of games:
I barely remember any of these games happening, but man, what a run of results. Three big wins against divisional opponents, two blowout losses, three losses to some of the worst teams in the NHL, blowout win followed by blowout loss, losing the first half of a back-to-back and winning the second one, goalies starting the game after they were shellacked, just truly bizarre shit. They had a +7 goal differential and went 3-3 from February 6th to the 15th. How does that happen?
Anyways, back to the main narrative. After bumbling up and down the standings, the Flames won their first three games in March, and then…
You know what comes here: COVID! Before the Flames could head into the final grind of the season desperately clinging onto a playoff spot, the world stopped and hockey wouldn’t come back for a few months.
The rest of the world will disagree, but the entire coronavirus thing probably worked out well for Geoff Ward. The Flames were nominally a playoff team at the end of the regular times, but no one was really convinced that they were. Had the season continued on just a bit, I would guess that the Flames would’ve won four in a row just to lose eight straight or fall just short after going .500 over the final 12 games. They would have fun with our emotions, but I could not imagine they make the dance. There would be no epic March collapse for Ward.
No, that would happen in the playoffs. Fast forward to July, the Flames get a pretty favourable draw against the Jets and dispatch them quickly 3-1. I don’t know if the return-to-play round counts in your books, but it does in the NHL books, so it was technically a playoff series win. Then they draw against a Dallas team that many considered to be the easiest of the top four seeds, and look primed to go up 3-1 in the series as they’re leading late in the third….
Oh, you know where this one is going. You don’t want to know, but you do.
The Flames fucking blow it. Matthew Tkachuk can only look on in frustration as the Flames’ meltdown over the course of three games and get to leave the bubble early. They tuck their tail between their legs and let Dallas win a series they were oh-so-close to losing.
Usually, the outrage from blowing a series in that manner results in the coach losing his job. Like, you cowered in the playoffs. The only part of the NHL year where there’s no overtime point to play for, and they went and spent three whole games playing for it.
But, uh, that was also more success in the playoffs than Peters or Gulutzan. By the NHL’s measures, he’s tied for most playoff victories among Flames head coaches post-Sutter and the only one to move on since Bob Hartley beat Vancouver. Even if you don’t count the play-in round, two wins were more than Peters’ one, and Ward’s Flames were a lower seed and not blowing it against an eight seed. That’s some progress.
So Ward - still not officially the head coach - got to remain in the discussions. If you’ve followed this team for a long time, that meant that he was the only candidate seriously considered. Maybe having two long offseasons led to a bunch of overthinking, maybe the budget constraints just meant that the preferred option wasn’t so preferred anymore. Maybe it was the unease at having four different de facto head coaches over the past three years, or they felt that losing your best player and the goaltending collapsing in game six weren’t entirely his fault. Maybe they actually bought the hype of winning a fake playoff round, who knows. Ward had the interim tag removed and was now the full-time coach.
So now it’s the 2021 season. You know what happens here.
For the sake of everyone’s mental health, I’ll just sum it up: Ward drowns. The team stumbles into their old habits of falling behind early and taking entire periods off, and his solutions make it worse (Bennett on the first line? For more than one game?). He’s unable to inspire the guys to play harder and he’s too nice to really dig into them. He tried the music at practice bit again. Team keeps losing, out goes Ward.
And that was the limp to the end of arguably the most absurd chapter of Calgary Flames history. The guy who didn’t get hired for the job he was doing gets to keep doing it because the world fell apart around him, and everyone in charge said “well, I guess.” Even though the signs were there that this wasn’t working, all the forces of the universe united to push a hapless coach to continue failing, and fail he did. It would’ve been very funny if it was any other team, but it happened to the Calgary Flames, so it’s really only tragi-comic.
Wrong Narratives Surrounding Darryl Sutter
Don't be scared that he's a dinosaur. Maybe worry he's Peters 2.0
by Nathan (@hanoten)
With the biggest news of the Flames season dropping late Thursday night after a 7-3 win against the Ottawa Senators, Darryl Sutter is once again behind the bench of the Calgary Flames, nearly 15 since he last coached the team.
Darryl Sutter is a big name, and he has the reputation to back it up. The tough, no-nonsense farmer from Viking, Alberta is as meat and potatoes as they come, so I’m told. This guy once traded his own son, so there shall be no one who gets by without blood, sweat, and tears from bag skates.
Hell, our own Francis Ericsson summed it up in 2018 when he retired with the headline “Darryl Sutter rides tractor into sunset.” Admittedly, that headline is now wrong, which Ericsson rarely is, but I would hate to call out the longest-tenured member of Calgary’s illustrious PHWA chapter.
Much has been made about how the skill players such as Johnny Gaudreau will fare under Sutter, and if he’s too old-school for the players because of his defensive preference. This was asked repeatedly at Sutter’s introductory conference until some shmuck said the word blueprint, and then weirdly every question after that had to ask about blueprints as well.
He’s only had one full day of practice with the team at time of publication. It’s a bit early to jump the gun for a coach who has won multiple Stanley Cups as a coach within the past decade. And yet, this past week has been full of articles such as this.
Under Darryl Sutter, the Los Angeles Kings were a team who frequently controlled the play, although goals were seemingly tough to come by (except the first season Sutter started as coach, in which they were 3rd in the west. His teams can score). He got the most out of L.A.’s players in their prime and also was able to turn Dustin Brown and Mike Richards into something useful. Yes, he’s tough, but he’s not incompetent.
The buzz surrounding Sutter is something you’d think we would have seen more when Bob Hartley was hired. Sure, many in the Flames blogosphere were lamenting the choice from day one, but none of the major media blitz we’re currently seeing. Bob Hartley was a coach who hadn’t been relevant for 15 years when he was hired. The narratives just don’t make sense.
It’s also nice that they gave him a few years, because this season is and should be a wash. It’s the cursed COVID year. It doesn’t count. It shouldn’t even be happening, but I digress.
What would be nice for more to acknowledge is if Sutter has done anything to address the accusations from Daniel Carcillo among others about the alleged abuse he put players through. When Brad Treliving introduced Sutter, he said that Calgary’s coaching has never had more stability. That was what Bill Peters was supposed to bring, before the whole being racist and abusive bit.
Sutter was asked about this at his introduction, and casually said that “the truth will prevail,” which isn’t all that encouraging. Bill Peters has shown that things can definitely happen and be true, and yet you can still get hired and cause more harm until one big breaking point. Peters got off easy, all things considered. The truth isn’t what the record legally shows. Sutter should be on a tight leash with the allegations surrounding him.
Is it exciting? Undeniably. The Flames made a hype video for a coach, and it wasn’t bad. Does Sutter’s record indicate he’s a good coach? Absolutely, especially when you remember that him as a coach and him as a GM are different people. He won’t be allowed anywhere near a second-round pick unless it’s an actual player.
However, there should be wariness surrounding him if his coaching tactics have not evolved from crossing a line with people. If we’re going to call him out for being too old-school, it should have nothing to do with his systems. It should be not holding up the standards of the old boys’ hockey club which has ruined the lives of countless players and kept the doors shut tight on anyone who doesn’t fit the mold.
Darryl’s whole thing is unfinished business in Calgary, which is exciting and would have made a great Scorchstack shirt if not for reasons that remained unfurnished or something. I’d be thrilled if he won a Cup in Calgary finally, maybe next year so I can celebrate on Red Mile fully vaccinated.
But if he brings more of the same attitude that led his previous players to say “Darryl is a bad human being,” then winning the Cup isn’t worth it. And the narrative should focus more on that.
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I found this on eBay and would like everyone else to see it. That is the advertisement for this week. Has no holes, but is covered in stains.
I Sort Of Learned What Farms Are
fuck u Darryl for making me do this
by Ramz (@ramzreboot)
In honour of Darryl Sutter coming out of retirement from his farm to coaching the Flames again, I figured that it’s finally time: it’s time for me to learn what a farm is.
Now, before you come in here like, “What, you don’t know what a farm is, how stupid are you?”(and to that I say: very), okay, I KNOW what a farm is. I know the idea of a farm, I know what it is in theory. But in practice? Could not tell you. What do they do every day? You feed animals I guess? And then what? There are many jobs where I’m like, Ok, what do you do every day? So today we are going to learn together, and you’re going to come on my research journey with me.
It’s like what Scorchie Nathan said in our groupchat: “Like when you’re playing scattergories and the topic is farm animals and you gotta think of some after the big ones.”
Let’s start our research by Googling: “What are farms?”
Google says that a farm is a piece of land used to grow crops and/or raise animals. Wait a minute, what’s this? A link that says, “Farm facts for kids?” Perfect for me, now THIS I will understand.
It’s been a couple minutes and all this website does is give me the history of farms and names of farms around the world. I don’t give a rat’s ass, kids.kiddle.co, you stupid pieces of shit.
Alright, we found a new link, this one seems a little better than that stupid kid’s encyclopedia. This one says that farms are busy places, and the days start before the sun rises and after it sets. Ok, doing what? Nobody can tell me. Literally, the only things I know is that you butcher animals, which is usually done by a butcher anyways, maybe, I think, I actually don’t know, and you go and get eggs from chickens, and you have to feed the animals sometimes, but don’t they just eat grass anyway? Whatever, let’s continue.
There are apparently many different types of farms. Wait a sec, NOW we’re getting into the meat and potatoes. This says, "To get an idea of life on different kinds of farms, click on a farm type below.” Will we finally learn what farmers do?
Side note - this site has Truck farms and in brackets wrote “(no, they don’t grow trucks!)”.
This site lists eight different types of farms, the truck farm obviously, along with orchards, vineyards, ranches, dairy farms, poultry farms, hog farms, and fish farms. Fish farms? You mean the fucking ocean? What do you MEAN a fish farm? That’s literally just a body of water.
I also wasn’t aware there were different types of farms for different animals. I just thought they were all together, so I have finally learned something. Let’s click on dairy farms to find out their daily chores since I’m a big fan of dairy. Love a good yogurt parfait.
This says that dairy farm activities are milking the cows, feeding the cows, and helping mother cows give birth to babies (calves). Okay, besides the giving birth one since I’m assuming that’s not a daily occurrence, how much time does that consume? Will nobody tell me what it is these people do that takes up what is described as like over 12 hours of the day?
Okay, I found another website with the headline “What does a farmer do?” This site lists more types of farmers, like beekeepers, vermiculturist - which is a big word for saying someone wants to fuck worms - and an alligator farmer, which sounds extremely cool but also something I would never do because I’m not stupid. My apologies if I offended any vermiculturists with that statement but like, come on dude. We know.
It describes an alligator farmer as someone who breeds and raises alligators or crocodiles in order to produce leather, meat, and other goods. You know what, that’s like raising a child, so you’re a full-time parent, I understand that. A little more morbid, but I get being a full-time parent, so that gets a pass.
In clicking through all these options, it just says their general workload, which is fair, I can understand that. But there are like, four things, and some are big things that definitely don’t happen every day. Will someone please give me like a daily outlook on what a farmer does on a daily basis? Take me through your day, I WILL watch your vlog on this. Sutter family vlog, his next career path?
All in all, today I learned there is more than one type of animal farm and that’s about it. Mr. Sutter, please send me an email with your daily activities, thank you.
The Scorchstack AHL Update
the pipeline to the NHL!
by Floob (@itlooksreal)
According to Wikipedia, the American Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league based in the United States and Canada that serves as the primary developmental league for the National Hockey League. I’m told it’s where the players that are under NHL contracts, but aren’t good enough to play on the NHL team are stashed to develop or get ice time they wouldn’t get on the big club or whatever. It’s a league where the quality and presentation are far less than the NHL, and apparently people think that’s interesting.
To be clear, it is not.
But the AHL season is underway (it is! I looked it up!), and we here at the Scorchstack have our pulse on everything related to the Calgary Flames, which means we have to keep our eye on what is happening, and since I drew the short straw, I have to be the one to tell you about it.
So, the Flames have a minor pro affiliate partnership with the Stockton Heat (had to look that one up too), based out of Stockton, a town that can be characterized as the Lethbridge of Southern California. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic protocols, and being an American team that exists to serve a Canadian one, the Heat are required to play their games out of Calgary for this 2021 season. You might recognize Calgary as the city where the Calgary Flames are based out of. I feel like that isn’t a coincidence. I don’t know, maybe I’ll look into that.
Anyway, let’s review last week’s Stockton Heat action!
Last Wednesday, they beat Belleville. That’s good? I don’t think Belleville is very strong, so they probably should win. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Justin Kirkland, who we love, scored a goal, but whatever man, what is Belleville anyway?
The Heat also beat Toronto in two straight games, which is nice, because fuck Toronto, but man, did anyone notice any of this? Why does anyone want to watch a bunch of hockey players that aren’t good enough to play on THE CALGARY FLAMES?
Then they beat Manitoba in overtime on Monday. The whole ass province of Manitoba has a team? Good lord the AHL sucks.
This week the Heat suit up for four straight games against Laval. I would kill myself instead of watching that.
As far as your Heat players to look out for, I don’t know, is Dustin Boyd still on this team? Maybe watch out for him. I think there are a lot of goalies on the team, so maybe one of them? Who cares?
That’s your Stockton Heat AHL update, courtesy of your pals at the Scorchstack.
Abolish the draft lottery
It sucks, it’s stupid, get rid of it
by Konnie (@konnie49)
Have you ever looked at something that made absolutely no sense, made people irrationally angry, and provided absolutely no benefits to anyone? (ed. note: Konnie we all watch the Flames)
The NHL Draft Lottery has long been a confusing mess of a system, ever since it was introduced back in 1995 after allegations that the Ottawa Senators and others had purposely tanked in order to receive high draft picks. Tanking was seen as a sin that had no equal in its pure evilness, so the NHL had to quickly create the ultimate deterrent to tanking.
At first, winning the lottery meant that the winning team could move up four spots in the draft. Then, after a certain Alberta-based oil-branded team got to draft 1st overall three years in a row, the NHL decided to change the lottery in 2015 so that any team that missed the playoffs could then win 1st overall. You won’t believe which team won.
After that disaster, the NHL, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make the system even more needlessly complicated. Today, the top three picks are all up for grabs, with each lottery being done separately but in conjunction with each other. Suffice to say, this absolutely blows.
Now the league is looking at adding even more rules to further prevent what it views as tanking. These changes involve teams who have won a draft lottery in the past five years not being allowed to win a lottery, only having the top two picks be available in the draft, and teams can only jump up 10 spots.
Why is this a thing? Is tanking so horrid and prevalent in the modern NHL that the draft lottery rules must resemble the script to Inception? The worst part about this situation is when it inevitably pleases no one in the NHL head offices, more rules and more tinkers are going to be implemented which will then piss off more people, creating a never-ending piss-off cycle of annoyance.
To save everyone’s sanity and to fix this problem once and for all, the best thing to do with the draft lottery is to get rid of it entirely. It is not the deterrent the NHL originally hoped for and has put the league into many embarrassing situations that it could have easily avoided.
Tanking has been as much of a commonplace as it ever has been before a lottery was ever instituted. Hell, the two worst teams of the cap era, the 2016-17 Colorado Avalanche and the 2019-20 Detroit Red Wings, both happened under the current lottery rules where a team in last place has an over 50% chance to move down to the 4th overall spot. Even when the odds are stacked against them, teams are still willing to tank even for a chance at 1st overall.
"But it is embarrassing for the league to have teams actively tanking," I hear you wonderful Scorchstack readers say. I will counter you with this: How is one team’s decision to be actively bad that detrimental to a league's image when they already have teams perennially in the basement without any hope for the future, yet if they give up and tank again, they can't even guarantee they get the best pick in the draft? How is a team with no business of winning a lottery getting lucky less embarrassing than a team committing to sucking for the short term for the betterment of their future?
With no draft lottery, a team tanking for the 1st overall pick is entirely responsible for their future decisions and the direction they want to take their franchise in. They still need to draft properly, they still need to develop their prospects. The onus is on 100% on the franchise to get it right or risk being a laughing stock. If a team tanks an entire season only to get a draft bust 1st overall, then it will be their fault and their fault alone for doing so. Not every player going first overall is worth tanking for and good teams will know that.
When you mix in random luck, convoluted rules, and odds stacked against the worst teams in the league, all you get a league that can't be taken seriously, fanbases actively invalidating teams by saying "Oh they are only good because they got really lucky," and everyone scrambling to fix issues with a system that is fundamentally flawed.
Up Next Week
The NHL has announced a multi-year, big-bucks deal with ScorchStack to broadcast NHL games. Yes, that’s real.
Unfortunately, the cash influx isn’t enough to save the ScorchStack PodBlast (our podcast) as personality clashes and repeated staff turnover have ruined a once prestigious show.
I think we’re starting a book club or something.
Week six of Sam Bennett trade watch. Trying to come up with some pun related to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, but not sure whether the pun should be in the title of the play or if the author’s name being similar to Bennett’s is the crux of that joke.