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GILBERTSON: With Sutter’s return, pressure is on Flames’ core players – Calgary Sun

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Those guys were hard-hatted.

These guys might be hard-headed.

Darryl Sutter, who led the Calgary Flames to within a whisker — or perhaps a pixel — of a Stanley Cup parade in 2004, is now back behind the bench at the Saddledome, tasked with squeezing more out of a talented core that has already churned through several coaches.

Under their new boss, there will be no excuse for falling short of expectations.

The Flames made this surprise move late Thursday, announcing about 75 minutes after a 7-3 rout of the Ottawa Senators that Geoff Ward had been fired and that Sutter is returning to his old stomping grounds.

They are, indeed, going full retro.

Sutter was a staple at the Saddledome for an eight-year span from Dec. 28, 2002, until that exact same date in 2010, serving as skipper and then general manager.

MAY 27, 2004 – Coach Darryl Sutter and the boys are not too happy during the third period of Stanley Cup final game 2 action in Tampa Bay, between Calgary Flames and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
MAY 27, 2004 – Coach Darryl Sutter and the boys are not too happy during the third period of Stanley Cup final game 2 action in Tampa Bay, between Calgary Flames and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Photo by Dean Bicknell /Postmedia file

In his first full season at the helm, he guided two superstars — right-winger Jarome Iginla and netminder Miikka Kiprusoff — and a bunch of relative unknowns on a fairytale run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.

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The Red Mile was born that spring, the city rallying around a band of overachievers that was being spurred along by the no-nonsense farm-boy from a few hours to the northeast in Viking, Alta.

Since that stint in Calgary, Sutter has twice had his name engraved on hockey’s ultimate prize. He coached the Los Angeles Kings to the NHL title in 2012 and again in 2014.

The Flames’ current core — now taking their orders from a 62-year-old Sutter, most recently an advisor for the Anaheim Ducks — has barely advanced through a playoff round, let alone stuck around long enough for bushy beards and banner-raisings.

Maybe ‘The Jolly Rancher’ can change that.

That’s what Calgary’s general manager, Brad Treliving, is banking on.

Treliving and Sutter will address the media on Friday at 11 a.m. MT video call. When the team takes the ice for an early-afternoon practice, Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Matthew Tkachuk & Co. better be ready to bust their butts.

JANUARY 31, 2010 — Calgary Flames General Manager Darryl Sutter spoke on January 31, 2010 about the trade involving Dion Phaneuf, Fredrik Sjostrom and prospect Keith Aulie to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sunday morning. In return the Flames are getting four players including Matt Stajan, Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers and Ian White.
JANUARY 31, 2010 — Calgary Flames General Manager Darryl Sutter spoke on January 31, 2010 about the trade involving Dion Phaneuf, Fredrik Sjostrom and prospect Keith Aulie to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sunday morning. In return the Flames are getting four players including Matt Stajan, Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers and Ian White. Photo by Colleen De Neve /Postmedia file

Sutter, even if he’s softened a wee bit since his initial stop in Calgary, will demand as much.

Thursday’s late-night coaching switch should squash any talk of a tear-down or rebuild. You don’t bring in a guy with Sutter’s resume — he is No. 17 on the NHL’s all-time wins list with a career mark of 634-467-101-83 — or reputation unless you consider yourselves a contender.

While the new/old boss has reportedly signed a three-year contract, he’s not here to preach patience. He’s back to change the culture, to insist on the same sort of relentless effort that helped him and five of his brothers go from spirited scrimmages in the hayloft to squaring off at the highest level.

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The results, starting with Saturday’s Battle of Alberta against the Edmonton Oilers (8 p.m., CBC/Sportsnet 960 The Fan), will be fascinating.

Ward was ultimately scapegoated for an inconsistent, unpredictable start to this 56-game sprint. The Flames have been a mixed bag so far, with an 11-11-2 record that has featured a few dominant victories and a few too many demoralizing losses.

Thursday’s 7-3 thumping of the last-place Senators was too little too late, to save his job.

“I think the mental readiness of our team was good, I thought the work ethic was good, and I thought our details were a lot better,” Ward praised.

While he was axed shortly after that post-game presser, those same traits — engagement, accountability and a willingness to work — will be priorities under Sutter. He won’t accept anything less.

And if the message doesn’t stick, if wins don’t follow, you can bet the next move will be a farewell to one of the skating stars. Or several of them.

Prior to Ward’s ouster, there seemed to be two trains of thought for a frustrated fan-base — either blame the coach or blame the general manager for not hiring a proven winner.

Ward, as likeable a guy as you’ll ever meet, lasted less than six months after his ‘interim’ tag was removed. Previously, he’d only worked as an assistant or associate at the NHL level.

His predecessor, Bill Peters, never made the Stanley Cup playoffs as a head coach before he arrived in Calgary. (Peters was forced to resign after startling allegations of past misconduct, including a racial slur.)

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Treliving’s first coaching hire, Glen Gulutzan, was also short on experience and profile.

Sutter brings both.

Darryl Sutter instructs players during a practice of the Calgary Flames at the Saddledome.
Darryl Sutter instructs players during a practice of the Calgary Flames at the Saddledome. Photo by Tim Fraser /Calgary Herald

The moment he walks through the door, he will be the most accomplished guy in the locker room.

His demanding can style work. He has two Stanley Cup rings as proof of it. If video-review technology was further along in 2004, it might be three.

Which means that the pressure is on the Flames’ players now, especially those core pieces.

You could argue, up until Thursday at 10:50 p.m. MT, that Treliving had assembled all of the ingredients except for an established top-of-his-craft coach.

The Flames have a talented forward cast, although their go-to guys have yet to silence their critics in the spring.

While they don’t necessarily have a premier defenceman, a description that Mark Giordano no longer fits at age 37, they are certainly solid on the blue-line. Giordano has been around so long that he had Sutter as his GM when he was first cutting his teeth at the Saddledome.

They just signed one of the NHL’s elite puck-stoppers, Jacob Markstrom, to a six-year deal.

Can Sutter get this group to play to their capabilities? Or, better yet, beyond?

When they arrive at the rink Friday, Gaudreau and Monahan will be meet-and-greeting with their fifth head coach. That’s a lot of bosses for two guys in their mid-20s. (Treliving has now hired four of them since he inherited Bob Hartley.)

Sutter, however, won’t require a tour of the rink.

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He knows the organization and ownership.

He knows the city.

He knows what buttons to push, and we’ve all seen the evidence of it.

Back in 2004, the Flames were rarely, if ever, outworked. For that reason, the hard hat was a fitting prize for their in-house player-of-the-game nod.

This current cast has worked when they want to. It’s never lasted long-term, and it’s never been more obvious than this season, when they have oh-so-often followed a strong showing with a total stinker.

Can Sutter buck that trend? Can he be the difference?

We’re about to find out.

wgilbertson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/WesGilbertson

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Soccer legend Christine Sinclair says goodbye in Vancouver |

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Christine Sinclair scored one final goal at B.C. Place, helping the Portland Thorns to a 6-0 victory over the Whitecaps Girls Elite team. The soccer legend has announced she’ll retire from professional soccer at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season. (Oct. 16, 2024)

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A German in charge of England? Nationality matters less than it used to in international soccer

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The question was inevitable.

At his first news conference as England’s newly appointed head coach, Thomas Tuchel – a German – was asked on Wednesday what message he had for fans who would have preferred an Englishman in charge of their beloved national team.

“I’m sorry, I just have a German passport,” he said, laughing, and went on to profess his love for English football and the country itself. “I will do everything to show respect to this role and to this country.”

The soccer rivalry between England and Germany runs deep and it’s likely Tuchel’s passport will be used against him if he doesn’t deliver results for a nation that hasn’t lifted a men’s trophy since 1966. But his appointment as England’s third foreign coach shows that, increasingly, even the top countries in the sport are abandoning the long-held belief that the national team must be led by one of their own.

Four of the top nine teams in the FIFA world rankings now have foreign coaches. Even in Germany, a four-time World Cup winner which has never had a foreign coach, candidates such as Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Austrian Oliver Glasner were considered serious contenders for the top job before the country’s soccer federation last year settled on Julian Nagelsmann, who is German.

“The coaching methods are universal and there for everyone to apply,” said German soccer researcher and author Christoph Wagner, whose recent book “Crossing the Line?” historically addresses Anglo-German rivalry. “It’s more the personality that counts and not the nationality. You could be a great coach, and work with a group of players who aren’t perceptive enough to get your methods.”

Not everyone agrees.

English soccer author and journalist Jonathan Wilson said it was “an admission of failure” for a major soccer nation to have a coach from a different country.

“Personally, I think it should be the best of one country versus the best of another country, and that would probably extend to coaches as well as players,” said Wilson, whose books include “Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics.”

“To say we can’t find anyone in our country who is good enough to coach our players,” he said, “I think there is something slightly embarrassing, slightly distasteful about that.”

That sentiment was echoed by British tabloid The Daily Mail, which reported on Tuchel’s appointment with the provocative headline “A Dark Day for England.”

While foreign coaches are often found in smaller countries and those further down the world rankings, they are still a rarity among the traditional powers of the game. Italy, another four-time world champion, has only had Italians in charge. All of Spain’s coaches in its modern-day history have been Spanish nationals. Five-time World Cup winner Brazil has had only Brazilians in charge since 1965, and two-time world champion France only Frenchmen since 1975.

And it remains the case that every World Cup-winning team, since the first tournament in 1930, has been coached by a native of that country. The situation is similar for the women’s World Cup, which has never been won by a team with a foreign coach, though Jill Ellis, who led the U.S. to two trophies, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in England.

Some coaches have made a career out of jumping from one national team to the next. Lars Lagerbäck, 76, coached his native Sweden between 2000-09 and went on to lead the national teams of Nigeria, Iceland and Norway.

“I couldn’t say I felt any big difference,” Lagerbäck told The Associated Press. “I felt they were my teams and the people’s teams.”

For Lagerbäck, the obvious disadvantages of coaching a foreign country were any language difficulties and having to adapt to a new culture, which he particularly felt during his brief time with Nigeria in 2010 when he led the African country at the World Cup.

Otherwise, he said, “it depends on the results” — and Lagerbäck is remembered with fondness in Iceland, especially, after leading the country to Euro 2016 for its first ever international tournament, where it knocked out England in the round of 16.

Lagerbäck pointed to the strong education and sheer number of coaches available in soccer powers like Spain and Italy to explain why they haven’t needed to turn to an overseas coach. At this year’s European Championship, five of the coaches were from Italy and the winning coach was Luis de la Fuente, who was promoted to Spain’s senior team after being in charge of the youth teams.

Portugal for the first time looked outside its own borders or Brazil, with which it has historical ties, when it appointed Spaniard Roberto Martinez as national team coach last year. Also last year, Brazil tried — and ultimately failed — to court Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, with Brazilian soccer federation president Ednaldo Rodrigues saying: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foreigner or a Brazilian, there’s no prejudice about the nationality.”

The United States has had a long list of foreign coaches before Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine former Chelsea manager who took over as the men’s head coach this year.

The English Football Association certainly had no qualms making Tuchel the national team’s third foreign-born coach, after Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12), simply believing he was the best available coach on the market.

Unlike Eriksson and Capello, Tuchel at least had previous experience of working in English soccer — he won the Champions League in an 18-month spell with Chelsea — and he also speaks better English.

That won’t satisfy all the nay-sayers, though.

“Hopefully I can convince them and show them and prove to them that I’m proud to be the English manager,” Tuchel said.

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AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this story.

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Maple Leafs winger Bobby McMann finding game after opening-night scratch

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TORONTO – Bobby McMann watched from the press box on opening night.

Just over a week later, the Maple Leafs winger took a twirl as the first star.

McMann went from healthy scratch to unlikely offensive focal point in just eight days, putting up two goals in Toronto’s 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.

The odd man out at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, he’s slowly earning the trust of first-year head coach Craig Berube.

“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” McMann said of his reaction to sitting out Game 1. “Maybe some guys fit better in certain scenarios than others … just knowing that my opportunity would come.”

The Wainwright, Alta., product skated on the second line with William Nylander and Max Domi against Los Angeles, finishing with those two goals, three hits and a plus-3 rating in just over 14 minutes of work.

“He’s been unbelievable,” said Nylander, who’s tied with McMann for the team lead with three goals. “It’s great when a player like that comes in.”

The 28-year-old burst onto the scene last February when he went from projected scratch to hat-trick hero in a single day after then-captain John Tavares fell ill.

McMann would finish 2023-24 with 15 goals and 24 points in 56 games before a knee injury ruled him out of Toronto’s first-round playoff loss to the Boston Bruins.

“Any time you have success, it helps the confidence,” he said. “But I always trust the abilities and trust that they’re there whether things are going in or (I’m not) getting points. Just trying to play my game and trust that doing the little things right will pay off.”

McMann was among the Leafs’ best players against the Kings — and not just because of what he did on the scoresheet. The forward got into a scuffle with Phillip Danault in the second period before crushing Mikey Anderson with a clean hit in the third.

“He’s a power forward,” Berube said. “That’s how he should think the game, night in and night out, as being a power forward with his skating and his size. He doesn’t have to complicate the game.”

Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz knew nothing about McMann before joining Toronto in free agency over the summer.

“Great two-way player,” said the netminder. “Extremely physical and moves really well, has a good shot. He’s a key player for us in our depth. I was really happy for him to get those two goals.

“Works his butt off.”

ON TARGET

Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who scored 69 times last season, ripped his first goal of 2024-25 after going without a point through the first three games.

“It’s not going to go in every night,” said Matthews, who added two assists against the Kings. “It’s good to see one fall … a little bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders.”

WAKE-UP CALL

Berube was animated on the bench during a third-period timeout after the Kings cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-2.

“Taking care of the puck, being harder in our zone,” Matthews said of the message. “There were times in the game, early in the second, in the third period, where the momentum shifted and we needed to grab it back.”

PATCHES SITS

Toronto winger Max Pacioretty was a healthy scratch after dressing the first three games.

“There’s no message,” Berube said of the 35-year-old’s omission. “We have extra players and not everybody can play every night. That’s the bottom line. He’s been fine when he’s played, but I’ve got to make decisions as a coach, and I’m going to make those decisions — what I think is best for the team.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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