If Lou Lamoriello doesn't have a problem with Brent Sutter taking over behind the Flames bench, then neither should we.

For now, the circumstances might still seem a bit odd. A coach leaves New Jersey because he’s homesick, then walks into the same job with a team that spends a lot more nights on the road than the Devils?

But players ask to be traded all of the time, and other than a bit of squawking in the town they leave, it has become an accepted part of the game. If Dany Heatley can do it, why not Brent Sutter?

Once the season begins, New Jersey will have its new coach in place, and the sight of Sutter standing behind a bench in southern Alberta will look as right as rain.

Especially with the list of priorities Calgary Flames GM laid out on Tuesday.

“Leadership, structure and detail,” Flames general manager Darryl Sutter listed off, when asked what he was looking in his new head coach, who just happens to be his four-years younger brother.

“Certainly... my strengths,” countered Brent. “You can’t have structure and an identity on the ice of you don’t have it off the ice. We will have it on the ice.”

For these eyes, if New Jersey GM Lou Lamoriello is OK with what went down since Darryl phoned and asked for permission to talk to his own brother about the job on June 12 — and Lou seems to be — then we are too. And if you can find anything wrong with one Sutter coaching for another in Calgary, then you are either a conspiracy theorist or a Canucks fan.

“It’s such a non-issue with us,” Brent said. “Darryl is the GM of the hockey team, I’m the head coach of the team. That’s how it is.”

It’s a notion that none of the brothers have ever taken kindly to, that somehow they hire each other — or get hired at all — because of the name on their driver’s licence.

“These guys sitting here, I coached every one of them,” Darryl said of Brent, and his assistants Ryan McGill, Dave Lowry and Jamie McLennan. “They were all strong leaders in the dressing room.

“You can flip all their last names around, put their first names where you want. They were the very best people available. It didn’t matter what their last name was.”

There just isn’t a more natural fit in the game than what transpired in Calgary today, where an Alberta franchise has now been completely bequeathed to that province’s most prominent hockey family.

There is a Sutter in the Calgary Flames farm system [Darryl’s son Brett]. Darryl runs the show in Calgary as GM. Duane is the director of player personnel. Ron is his western pro scout.

And now Brent becomes the third Sutter brother, after Darryl and Brian, to serve as head coach of the Flames. It is the first time in National Hockey League history that has ever happened.

Four of the six hockey playing Sutter brothers now reside in one organization, “an hour and a half drive from the farm,” as Brent said. The eldest, Brian, is fresh off of coaching the Central Alberta Bentley Generals to an Allan Cup.

[And the funny thing? The family farm in Viking is closer to Edmonton than to Calgary, yet nary a Sutter has ever cashed a cheque from the Oilers.]

So it is a day of celebration in Calgary, but not just for those who are wiling to place the fortunes of the local hockey team into the weathered hands of Lou and Grace Sutter’s boys. Because Brent’s hiring also marks the point in the Sutter era from which there is no return.

Darryl took this team to a Stanley Cup final in 2004, a series that will go down as the last great rodeo that the NHL would stand for. They changed the game significantly in the ensuing lost season, and since hockey has returned, those Sutter teams from Southern Alberta have not found a way to win even a single playoff round.

It’s a very good team Darryl Sutter has built — or so we always think each October. So why don’t they win? We’re still looking for that answer.

Darryl brought in his old mentor, Mike Keenan, to get the team over the top two years ago in a move that we thought was perfect at the time. It wasn’t.

Now, another hiring that seems absolutely, undeniably right on the money.

But if Brent doesn’t provide some playoff series wins over the next two seasons, you know exactly what they’ll say.

“Well, how many series did Brent Sutter win in New Jersey?” (The answer: zero).

“They changed the game after ’04. Sutter hockey doesn’t win in a new era. You can’t grind it out anymore. It takes skill now.”

And this old favourite: “Sure. Brent Sutter won two World Junior titles with Team Canada. Lots of guys have won with that team.”

It has taken a while, but the orbits of both the Sutter Bros. and the Calgary Flames have finally lined up. A tough, hard-nosed organization has stocked itself with the first family of Western Canadian hockey.

All the cards are on the table. This will be Sutter hockey, through and through.

If it wins, it’s a made in Alberta solution to a made in Alberta problem down in Calgary.

If it doesn’t, well, who can blame anyone in the Flames ownership group for trying this hand?

They’ve got two years: The clock is ticking.

It’s going to be fun for everyone, except perhaps those poor souls inside the Calgary Flames dressing room.