The 4th Line Blog

Recently I was critical of Brent Sutter, and with good reason.  The coaching decisions he makes are completely ridiculous: which goalie starts in important games, Staios on the powerplay, and finally the last minute of last night.  This quote from Ryan Lambert of The Two Line Pass illustrates what I’m referring to pretty well.

Memo to Brent Sutter: when your opponent ices it late in the third period, and your team is down by a goal, and the playoffs are literally on the line, you don’t put your fourth line on the goddamn ice, you moron.

Like I said, I was critical of Brent Sutter.  But last night was the last straw. I’m done believing this farce. There is no possible way he could be this goddamn stupid. I’m sorry, but I watched a lot of the Devils games last year and his coaching made ScoClem (copyright me) look like Martin Brodeur.  I don’t know how you can go from that to, well, starting Toskala in a must win game that isn’t a back to back (last Sunday against the wild).  I might not have played hockey in YEARS but I know not to put the worst goalie in the league in for a super important game. Or an aging D on the PP. There has to be one of two things going on here:

1. Ballin’ Sutter doesn’t have that much power, even though he’s the coach. In other words, Staios on the PP and Toskala starting this much mean that  Darryl is upstairs commanding these to happen in order to validate the absurd ridiculous asinine trades he made.
2. Brent hates his brother. I’m sure you’ve probably heard that if the Flames miss the post season, Daz is gone. Brent probably has too, and is excited at the prospect of having a GM who doesn’t think Kotalik is worth trading for.

Of course, like most things, the truth is probably somewhere in between.  GM Sutter is forcing Coach Sutter to make moronic coaching decisions, so Brent just runs with it because who wants to work in that environment?

There are other possibilities too though:

• Brain slugs are controlling Brent’s coaching maneuvers. They are also Oil fans.
• Brent has Alzheimer’s
• The Flames can only win the Cup once every century, and this century we need our win to prevent the Oilers from winning in 2 years (we’ll beat ‘em in the conference finals) and causing the apocalypse of 2012.
• Something about robots.