Thursday, January 14, 2010

ken king / darryl sutter Q & A

i'm heading down to flames central with my pops this afternoon to catch the ken and darryl show. apparently they'll be answering questions from 6 - 8pm tonight and i'll be there to observe and take notes.

like i said in a previous post, i'm not really much of an asker ---i prefer to sit quietly and take it all in (plus, i have found that historically there have been some really great queries off the floor)--- but if i had some awesome question submissions, i'd try to pipe up. feel free to drop a comment if you've got a good'er....

as for me, i sent this via email to the fan960 this afternoon, since a couple of the dudes over there will be emceeing/mediating the event (rob kerr, i believe, and someone else but i can't remember who). the odds that this question will be posed by anyone in the MSM is a longshot, so i'll write it down and bring it with me.... cause i, for one, would really like to know the answer(s):

this is the kind of hard-hitting quesiton that sutter and king never get asked and i hope you can fit it in between "how are we gonna get more scoring?" and "is noodles to credit for kiprusoff's turn-around" ? thanks....

******

last year's team was pushed so close to the cap (with the extra dollars picked up in the jokinen trade) that it was unable to squeeze replacement player salaries under the limit, and iced incomplete lineups and younger/cheaper athletes for ten days at season's end. this led in no short part to the flames falling out of first place in the northwest, and drawing a very strong chicago team in the first round of the playoffs.

what assurances can you give the fans that similar financial mismanagement, in regards to replacement player salaries and the cap, does not occur this year or in the future ?

******

thanks !!!
(ps: another great question is whether or not noodles is to credit for kippy's turnaround)

;)
WI
anyhow, we'll see how it goes. i would imagine i'll have a pretty lengthy post at some point tomorrow....

ps: i couldn't resist emailing this afterthought:

here's another question for the suits:

tod button once made mention (in july '08) that the flames employed a "numbers guy in the maritimes," to work out the mathematics/algorithms of player stats. is this fellow still on the payroll, and has he come up with anything noteworthy ?

thx.

8 comments:

mikeH said...

I'm liking the salary mismanagement question, such a huge problem going into last year's playoff slide.

I guess the thing that I wonder about going forward is the center role. Right now we have Olli (soon to be UFA, and generally useless), Lanks (32 years young), Connie (a.k.a. Gramps), and one of Prust/Boyd/Lundy rounding out the lineup. Realistically, how are we going to manage this next season? No doubt we'll save on the Joker's salary, but don't we need to hire 2, maybe 3 players with that amount of money? Last time we blew our wad on a chump (sorry about your feelings O.J.) and it doesn't sound like Backlund is going to be ready for prime time.

Anyway, I see us languishing with shitty faceoffs and generally average/older talent rolling down the middle of the ice for a while. Maybe this isn't a question for these guys now, but late this season it might require some analysis. Plus, I'm not nearly as on the ball as you are, so maybe we have a star on the farm that I'm not counting or there is some obvious free agent out there to be cherry picked.

R O said...

Could you ask if Iggy was injured last season (and the start of this season)? His turnaround over the last ten games is so drastic that either he has hit the hockey equivalent of the PowerBall, or he recovered from a serious injury that made him incapable of winning battles against good players.

walkinvisible said...

i want to stick to questions that will actually get answers and not the run-around. ie: asking about iggy's injury is kindof moot cause neither of the suits will tell us. infact, the cap issue question is also unlikely to get a real response, but i think it would be worth it to watch ol' daz (and KK) squirm....

mikeH said...

Questions that will actually get answers...hmmm... Women's alternate jersey? Fleury jersey retirement? Dion to be traded? Nope, none of those are going to get answered. And obviously we know that Daz didn't think Lombo's dreamy eyes were enough to make up for his hands of stone.

Maybe something to do with Abbotsford's economic health since the move or the new stadium would get a fairly straight answer out of Ken King. I don't think Darryl has it in him to provide an honest answer on actual strategy or tactics.

"Mr. Sutter, one question... when the organist plays the swedish chef, do you yell 'Bork, bork, bork'?"

walkinvisible said...

mikeH:
that last question is a doozy...
;) xx

mikeH said...

Oh, and apparently this just happened.

mikeH said...

Sorry, here's a better link. Theo's statement from his website.

Anonymous said...

How was the town hall meeting, walkinvisible? ANything interesting come up?