Fisking the sound bites

I dont know why Im doing this. Sutter has made it quite clear the last few years that he has no compunction against feeding the local media bromides, half-truths and outright falsehoods whenever it suits his purpose. At this point just about every Sutter quote that appears over the airwaves or in the paper should be taken with a giant pinch of salt, if not dismissed outright.

That said, Im going to pick apart his latest sound bites from this article anyways.

"Look at our team now," Sutter said Tuesday afternoon at the Pengrowth Saddledome. "We've got 15 or 16 forwards, eight or nine defencemen, who are legitimate NHL players. They're not all going to play here. So it's a different mindset . . . there are veterans who are going to have to make our team."

Seems straight forward, but it's pretty much nonsense upon reflection. If Sutter doesn't know right now which vets are useful players and which aren't, a few extra games in the pre-season aren't going to change anything. Wanna know a bad way to evaluate a veteran NHLer's potential performance? WATCH HIM DURING THE PRE-SEASON. Sutter has had an entire year (or more) to observe and evaluate the players he's alluding to here. Three or four exhibition games against half-hearted, pseudo-competition is just noise in terms of data quality.

I guess there's always the assertion that "competition for jobs will drive players to work harder and play better", but, really how much power does that have? Will that make Rhett Warrener less injured? A better skater? Will Wayne Primeau somehow be able to check more than a stationary coat-rack all of sudden because he's duelling with Brandon Prust and Andre Roy at the bottom of the roster?

No. No, no and no. At this stage of their careers, guys are what they are. Any gains from pitting teammate against teammate for a limited number of roster spots would be, at the very best, marginal and fleeting.

"What gets overlooked is we've been a really good team, but perhaps some of our more skilled players didn't compete very hard," said Sutter. "You can't win in the playoffs like that. So we've made adjustments in that area, without giving up any offence."

Boy oh boy...lots of issues here.

Number one - I can only hope that Sutter doesn't actually believe this is the reason the Flames have been a middling squad the last few years. If he honestly thinks that Kristian Huselius and Alex Tanguay were part(s) of the problem, well then...I don't know what to say.

Number two - the Flames haven't been "a really good team" for at least two seasons. At best they've been "slightly above average". And I think that's being generous.

Number three - Are Cammalleri and Bertuzzi really going to compete that much "harder" than Huselius and Tanguay? Think about it this way. If you swap the first two players with the latter two, would the Flames have been better or worse last season? Would they have done better in (or have made) the play-offs?

"It might be a different type of an offence . . . there were some elements missing the last couple years. One was clearly someone standing in front of the net -- Bertuzzi is clearly that. We wanted a better power play -- Cammalleri is clearly a better power-play guy."

Sigh. Outside of it's top-heaviness, The Flames offense has actually been pretty good from 06/07 till now. And while I think a body in front of the net can be beneficial (see: Thomas Holmstrom) it's hardly an element that's necessary to be successful. In short, I wouldn't say it was "missing" and further I doubt that Bertuzzi is the answer even if it were (feel free to chime in here Sleek).

As for the Cammalleri comment...does he mean better on the PP than Tanguay? Because that's true. Better than Huselius? Not true.

"For our team to go from being a top-third-of-the-league team to . . . higher than that, we have to improve our goals against," said Sutter. "I'm used to having a very good goals against and that's the coach's responsibility this year -- to make sure that this group that we've assembled (does that)."

Groovy. Except the Flames weren't in the top 3rd of the league. Last year, Calgary ranked 14th out of 30 teams. Meaning they were - just barely - a "top-half-of-the-league" team. So the Flames will have to improve their GA just to get into the top 3rd.

Sutter about signing heavyweight LW Andre Roy: "The player we'd had in that position the last couple years (RW Eric Godard) had probably maxed out."

Maxed out. I honestly don't know what this means. Did Sutter actually think Godard, with 4 minutes a night, was going to become a more capable hockey player in Flames silks? Hell, would Godard have gotten better with 20 minutes a night (answer: no)?

Again, who knows how much Sutter actually endorses any of the claims he peddles here. He could very well be shoveling it with a pitchfork and snickering about his duplicity behind closed doors. Taken at face value and in combination with his off-season activities doesn't make me feel very good about the coming season, though.