Times are tough in Calgary right now. The team is ineffective and not enjoying themselves. They recently had a peel-the-paint-off-the-walls team meeting after a 4-1 loss to Columbus in which coach Brent Sutter said the team’s inconsistency is like a bad disease.
Now to make matters worse, according to Steve MacFarlane of the Calgary Sun, Sutter is trying to get Jarome Iginla to change his game and that idea isn’t flying so well with the team captain.
“I understand individuals have done certain things in the past. Maybe I’m asking them to change their game a little bit for the betterment of the team. That’s probably what I’m doing to some degree, yes,” Sutter said during an impassioned scrum. “It’s the only way we’re going to have success.”
All right, so he wants Iginla to be more of a team oriented guy but he has to know that asking Iginla to not to overly bust his hump to help the team get out of their funk is like asking a fish to not breathe underwater. It’s not that simple.
Asking Iginla to try and help bring his teammates along for the ride with him rather than work in spite of them makes sense, but has he seen who his teammates are? Maybe letting Iginla run roughshod over opponents might work better.
Sutter saying he wants the Flames to do things more like how Detroit or Nashville does it as a team is noble, but they’re a team in need of a lot of help and trying to get Iginla to dumb things down isn’t going to help.