Five years ago, prior to Darryl Sutter taking the organizational reins, the Flames roster looked something like this:
Gelinas - Conroy - Iginla
Lowry - Drury - Clark
Saprykin - Yelle - Donovan
Begin - Nichol - Sloan
(Berube, Kobasew)
Regehr - Leopold
Lydman - Gauthier
Ference - Boughner
(Montador, Buzek)
Turek
McLennan
(Sabourin)
That year, the Flames somehow managed to have four 20+ goals scorers: Iginla (35), Conroy (22), Drury (23) and Gelinas (21). Only Iginla broke the 60 point barrier (67).
Toni Lydman led the defense in scoring with 6 goals and 26 points. A young Robyn Regehr and rookie Jordan Leopold were just starting to form a decent top pairing duo on the back-end, but weren't quite ready for prime time. Chuck Kobasew was a rookie who saw action in 23 contests: mainly because the roster was so desperate for some kind of scoring ability. The goaltending was just alright, and not good enough to hold together such a patch-work line-up. As you can plainly see, there was little depth and a lot of "role players" and flat-out prayers.
That club managed 75 points during the regular season and missed the play-offs by a touch down or so. They had a -42 GD and terrible special teams.
Of course, Sutter went about remaking the team in 03/04, acquiring Kipper, Nieminen, Nilson, Simon, McAmmond, Reinprecht and Warrener and dropping some dead weight (he'd also added Ference and Donovan during his brief stint in the org the year before if memory serves). The rest is history. Granted, that team couldn't seem to score either, but the firming up of the roster was a step in the right direction.
With exclusion of the odd miscalculation here and there (Rhino and Sauve for Boucher and Leclerc, Amonte/Friesen signings, Lydman for 3rd rounder, the Playfair thing) the Franchise has been in an upward swing ever since. And now, 5 seasons later, as the Oilers prepare to welcome their newest overpriced, ill-advised addition, I can't help but sit back and think 'Thank God for Sutter".
