Monday Musings: Darryl Sutter and the Presidents' Trophy Curse

Firing the man behind the bench was the best thing for the Flames, but has he already done too much irreparable damage? And finishing first overall didn't used to be an impediment, but it sure is now

Even people who have no idea what Nazem Kadri or Jonathan Huberdeau looks like would not have a hard time identifying either of them today. They’d be the ones walking with the spring in their steps, whistling Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead. That’s because the Calgary Flames fired coach Darryl Sutter on Monday, opting to pay him $4 million each of the next two years of his contract extension to be a cattle farmer and not an NHL coach.

And after the Stanley Cup-champion Colorado Avalanche were shocked in Game 7 by the Seattle Kraken in the first round, Kadri might also be seen humming the melody to Don’t You (Forget About Me). In fact, this is probably the happiest Kadri has been since winning the Stanley Cup with the Avalanche last June. The coach who made him miserable is gone and the team that chose to sign Valeri Nichushkin over him is a one-and-done Cup winner.

Meanwhile in Florida, while Huberdeau was one of the central reasons why Sutter was fired, the player for whom he was dealt was busy following up a 109-point, MVP-calibre season by leading the Florida Panthers to one of the greatest playoff upsets in NHL history. Matthew Tkachuk dragged the Panthers into the playoffs, then willed them through the opening round, shedding his reputation as a playoff underachiever and probably saving a few peoples’ jobs in the process.

My, my, what a tangled web we weave. The fact that this is all intertwined makes for fascinating hindsight, doesn’t it? And in the middle of much of it is Sutter, a two-time Stanley Cup winner as a coach whose second tenure with the Flames featured a little bit of everything. But this past season, it was highlighted by players on the Flames absolutely growing tired of his methods and a head-scratching deployment of personnel. He is gone and that is undoubtedly going to be a positive for the Flames. Everyone can see that. But it also begs the question of whether or not Sutter’s presence has already caused so much damage that it will take the organization years to recover.

It's so difficult to keep players in Canadian markets long-term, especially those who are born in the United States, but would the Flames have stood a better chance of retaining Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau if not for the presence of Sutter behind the bench? Yes. We do know there were times when there was friction between Sutter and both of his star players. That cannot be disputed. When asked to comment on Gaudreau’s upcoming 500^th career NHL game a few years back, Sutter said, “Hopefully he has more energy than in his 499^th game.” And when asked in training camp whether there are any similarities between Tkachuk and current Flame Tyler Toffoli, Sutter said, “No. One guy’s won Stanley Cups, been a part of long playoff runs.” If interim GM Don Maloney is to be taken at his word, a good number of Flames’ players and their agents made it clear that Sutter needed to go, which is why the Flames are prepared to throw $8 million into a sinkhole over the next two seasons.

Perhaps GM Brad Treliving was looking for new challenges anyway and would have turned down a contract extension with the Flames even without Sutter in the picture, but their differing visions led to the Flames losing one of the most respected GMs in the league today, one who will be unemployed only for as long as he chooses to be. Perhaps signing Huberdeau and Kadri to long-term deals was a mistake by the Flames, but it’s difficult to imagine any coach on the planet getting as little out of both players as Sutter did. The two players combined scored just two more points than Tkachuk did all by himself this season. From his insistence on playing Huberdeau on the right side to musing that the player, “had to go take a sh--,” when he left the bench for a brief period in the middle of a game, Sutter mishandled him in every way. We may have seen the best of Kadri last season and a steep decline might have been inevitable, but, wow, did he ever go sideways under this coach.

The treatment of rookie Jakob Pelletier, his stubborn insistence on jamming Milan Lucic into the top six, his baffling deployment of Nick Ritchie as the pivotal shootout shooter in a crucial game…all were Sutter’s handiwork and a clear indication he’s out of touch with the modern NHL player. The guys who interview for the Flames head coaching job would be well-advised to come up with a plan for unlocking Huberdeau’s offensive potential.

We all knew Kadri’s contract was not going to age well, but not many of us thought the decline would begin before the ink was dry? Again, we’re about to find out how much Sutter might have had to do with that. For all the injuries they faced this season, the Avalanche really, really missed what Kadri brought to them last season. And after Nichushkin, who was signed to an eight-year, $49 million contract extension last summer that essentially sealed Kadri’s fate, left the team after an incident in a Seattle hotel earlier in the series, there was no shortage of critics of the move.

PRESIDENTS’ TROPHY CURSE? THERE IS NOW

In the spring of 2019, just as his Tampa Bay Lightning were putting the finishing touches on one of the most dominant regular seasons in NHL history, coach Jon Cooper was sitting in his office at Amalie Arena musing about entering the post-season as the odds-on favourite to win the Stanley Cup.

“Well, if you had to bet on us winning the Stanley Cup or the field,” Cooper said, “you’d probably bet on the field, wouldn’t you?

It’s a good point and it goes a long way toward explaining why teams that earn the Presidents’ Trophy have such a difficult time winning Stanley Cups of late. In fact, it hasn’t been done in 10 years, not since the Chicago Blackhawks dominated the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season before winning it all. But it doesn’t explain why, at least in the last decade, the team finishing with the most points in the NHL standings has flamed out so spectacularly in the post-season.

The latest example, of course, is the Boston Bruins, who accumulated the most points and the fourth-best points percentage in NHL history, only to be ousted in the first round of the playoffs. It marked the eighth straight year that the Presidents’ Trophy winner has failed to advance beyond the second round of the playoffs and the third time since 2014 that the Bruins have suffered that ignominious fate.

It wasn’t always this way. In the 37 seasons from the time the league expanded to 12 teams in 1967-68 until the season-long lockout in 2005, 23 times the team that finished first overall either won the Stanley Cup or made it to the Cup final. An additional five teams made it as far as the semifinal or conference final. Indeed, there was once a time when teams that delivered in the regular season also did so in the playoffs.

In the 18 seasons in which the NHL has operated under a salary cap, only three times has the top regular-season team won the Cup or advanced to the final. Only two others made it as far as the conference final. At this point, it’s probably more than just a passing trend. But what to do about it? NHL coaches and players are hard-wired to do everything they can to win every regular-season and playoff game. That’s why tanks for draft picks must originate from the executive offices and not the dressing room or the bench. A Presidents’ Trophy curse likely isn’t going to stop coaches and players from keeping their feet on the gas down the stretch.

So you can look at this one of two ways. One way is that the regular season is effectively meaningless, and you might have a point. But the other might be to celebrate the fact that the playoffs truly are an opportunity for teams to reset, which makes things a little more interesting, at least in the first round.

DRIBS AND DRABS

The Kraken and Panthers pulling off first-round upsets will undoubtedly do nothing to quell the just-get-in-and-anything-can-happen crowd, one that has been bolstered by outliers such as the Los Angeles Kings in 2012 and ’14 and the St. Louis Blues in 2019. Along with the 1995 New Jersey Devils, they’re the only teams in NHL history to finish outside the top eight teams in the regular season, then go on to win the Stanley Cup…This is likely the beginning of the end for the Lightning. If you follow the template established by the Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins, a run of dominant playoff runs is followed by an early exit, which is then followed by more early exits, than an inability to make the playoffs. The Lightning, as they probably should, will spend the next couple of seasons chasing another championship with this core group, one they almost certainly won’t even come close to winning. Critics of this thinking will point out that Andrei Vasilevskiy, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Mikhail Sergachev are all under 30. That’s all well and good, but Jonathan Toews was 27 and Patrick Kane was 26 when the Blackhawks won their last Cup in 2015. You simply cannot continually trade away futures in a salary cap environment…The first-round series between the Vegas Golden Knights and Winnipeg Jets may have only gone five games, but that was some very entertaining big-boy hockey. It reminded me of 2015 when the Anaheim Ducks defeated the Jets in four straight in what was one of the most competitive and compelling sweeps I’ve ever seen.