It took three years, but the Calgary Flames have finally put the scalpel in the right place.
Something has been wrong ever since the Flames hit the ice on an April night in 2006 and laid a Saddledome sized egg in a game seven against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. The team lacked fortitude and gumption that night. They couldn’t alleviate the jitters and seize control of a very big hockey game on home ice, the venue that they should control. The fans saw it. Darryl Sutter saw it. The hockey world saw it. There was something wrong in Calgary.
Successive years saw pretty much the same thing. The Flames, faced with a league that was ramping up for a playoff push and getting their own collective games in order, just couldn’t match the games of other contending teams down the stretch. They lost division leads, the backed into the playoffs, and they were swept away in five or six games in each and every season.
Something had to change.
The first notion was to change the coaching staff. The theory was somewhat solid in that the team used the leadership and energy from their bench boss in Darryl Sutter to topple three division winners on their way to a cup final appearance in 2004. The Flames could in fact follow a coach.
They went young with Jim Playfair, they went old with Mike Keenan, they went familiar with Brent Sutter, but each and every chapter was the same; a team that lacked the consistency and the fortitude to dig down and get it done on a regular basis.
Today they abandoned “the plan” and finally moved one of the only pieces that were involved in each and every failure, by moving a core piece of the Calgary Flames roster, Dion Phaneuf.
The Flames dealt Phaneuf, prospect Keith Aulie and fourth line winger Freddie Sjostrom to the Toronto Maple Leafs for forwards Jamal Mayers, Matt Stajan and Niklas Hagman, as well as defenseman Ian White.
The nuts and bolts of the deal creates two roster players out the door and four players coming back meaning a pretty quick ticket to Abbotsford for Mikael Backlund and Jamie Lundmark. The team a quick 20% turnover will be a very different club instantly. The Flames get a pretty good replacement for Phaneuf in White, a top four in Calgary, and a player used to playing a tonne in Toronto. They add two top six forwards with pop, likely alleviating some of the scoring woes and getting a very new look up front. If Stajan plays on the third line the Flames are one of the deepest teams down the middle in hockey.
But back to Phaneuf.
It will be easy to suggest that Phaneuf was now the problem in the dressing room. All the consistency woes his fault. Cancer in the dressing room.
Could be.
But little is known. It could certainly be more true that the issue wasn’t a single player’s problem, but just a mix that wasn’t right and Phaneuf was the one to move more on his market value and age, then his direct contributions to problems in the dressing room.
The Flames needed change. They needed a new feel. They have that.
If they lose Stajan to UFA in July then you have a serious dent in the transaction and the Flames could be argued as the losers in the trade. If Dion Phaneuf goes on to win a Norris Trophy the Flames won’t have a hope in hell of calling themselves victors.
There is risk in a 7th place team adding instead of subtracting, and moving a core young player only to either miss the playoffs or bow out early is immense. This deal will be Sutter’s signature deal in his era no matter what happens down the road.
One thing is for certain, this deal can’t possibly be as bad as the last time the Leafs and Flames hooked up! Right? Lets hope so.
