Jim Kelley

Jim Kelley writes regularly on the NHL for Sportsnet.ca and can be heard on Primetime Sports on the FAN590.

For better or worse, Brent Sutter is behind the bench in Calgary.

Dr. Kelley is making house calls to deal with all the ailing squads patrolling rinks around the NHL.

You don't need to be a doctor or even have a doctorate in hockeynomics to understand that this is the time of the season when there's a lot of sickness being exposed.

Some of it, like what is happening in Calgary, is being addressed with radical surgery. What ails Columbus is being handled by dispensing a bitter pill. Whatever the problem is in Buffalo, it's seasonal and seems to be without a cure. In Washington there is yet another outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease.

Fortunately for you dear Sportsnet reader Dr. Kelley is in the house and will address your complaints in an orderly fashion and with less wait time then it takes to decipher a bad case of Darryl Sutter mumble.

Kelley you've told me for several seasons now that all is not well with a Calgary team that annually goes up in Flames. I didn't believe you, but now, even general manager Darryl Sutter seems out of it as he is making trades seemingly, for the sake of making trades. I'm not even sure that his brother Brent is "the right man for the job". It's sick out here and now the fans are expecting me to make it better. Are they kidding?

-- Ales "Ails" Kotalik

Ails: You've got a point. I almost fell out of my scooter-store chair when I read Sutter's remarks that the Sabres front office wanted badly to keep you but it was just a "money thing". You of all people should know if that's true then your new general manager must have given up on the concept of doing homework in the third grade. Look, I'm not going to gloat here. It's a terrible thing when a fan base has such high hopes and a team that delivers so little so often gets even worse, but you are neither the problem nor the answer. This has been a long-term illness and no quick fix is going to result in a Stanley Cup or maybe even a playoff berth this season. That's because Sutter hasn't embarked on Plan B, it's more like Plan F. When you consider the firings of Jim Playfair and Mike Keenan followed by the dubious hiring of brother Brent along with the other questionables moves. There is more to hockey then playing tough and when you factor in that your team has no true playmaking and scoring component, is annually unresponsive come crunch time when defensive mistakes are magnified and teams take advantage of the errors -- well, haven't we seen this before?

If you don't believe that, you probably think that playing games down the stretch last season without a full complement of players was a good thing and showed enlightened management. And you also think acquiring Olli Jokinen was not just a good hockey decision, but a good fiscal decision.

There's a chance Darryl Sutter will succeed with six new forwards from two of the most offensively challenged teams -- Toronto and the New York Rangers - in the NHL this season. That's only if you believe Sutter acquired Jay Bouwmeester so he could move Dion Phaneuf and that the first-round draft pick owed the Coyotes is looking every bit as good as the one Toronto's Brian Burke owes the Bruins. Of course that's without factoring Matthew Lombardi into the equation.

The Phaneuf deal aside; if you go back to when the Flames acquired Jokinen last March, Sutter has given up Jokinen, Brandon Prust, Jim Vandermeer, Lombardi and a first round pick for Higgins, "Ails" Kotalik and a third-rounder. If that's the path to good health my advice is to walk it with a rosary.

Dear Dr. Kelley: I have a Stanley Cup championship on my resume, I have 533 wins, good for 13th all time in the NHL and I have a reputation that helped Canada win a gold medal in the 2002 Olympics and have been invited back to try and help them gain another later this month in Vancouver. All that and I can't hold a job in Columbus, Ohio? Is there something wrong with me?

-- Ken "What's Up With That" Hitchcock

Dear What's Up: What can I say? Stuff happens and much like it did when you were wrongly let go in Philadelphia , goaltending is a big part of the equation. You didn't have it in Philly and you were certainly not getting it from Steve Mason this season in Columbus. In truth Ken, I always wonder why you took the Columbus job. Then general manager Doug MacLean was en route to being ousted and was gone shortly after you got there. That meant a new man -Scott Howson it turns out-and a new man is always going to be looking for his own man and you my friend, were not it.

I'm not saying you're blameless Ken, but given what you inherited from MacLean and what Howson brought in if it went south who did you think was going to get the hook, the new general manager?

Consider this statement from Howson when he was announcing your departure: "We didn't find the right mix for him, and I feel responsible for that. We didn't bring in the dynamic that he needed to be successful."

Therefore we fired him. Get the picture Ken? Look, you could have done a better job handling the youth on the team and been a little more flexible on how players fit your system rather than having a system that fits the players you have, but even if you did, it wasn't likely you would have survived. This has been an unstable and largely unsuccessful operation from the get-go, but they already fired one GM and the new one wasn't going to fall on his sword for you. After all, according to him, all you did was come to an organization that was in disarray and leave it in better shape and you brought "structure, credibility and legitimacy to our franchise, played a huge role in getting us to our playoff berth last season, and we've all learned a great deal from him in terms of commitment, preparation and attention to detail, and for that we're grateful to him."

Feel better? I didn't think so.

Dear Dr. Kelley:

--Lindy "What Me Worry" Ruff

Lindy, Lindy, Lindy, one of the reasons I've held off joining the Sabres "party" this season is that even with the requested "mulligan" for last season's playoff miss from your managing partner (actually the last two seasons) your team looked exactly the same to me. Sure Tyler Myers has been a true find as a rookie defenceman and Ryan Miller has bounced back from a subpar 2008-09, but those kids you insisted would grow up for the most part have, and are what you likely thought they were: offensively challenged. Your overall team defense is good but it's not truly a shut-down unit as evidenced by the fact you are rotating players in and out based on the number of mistakes they make. You don't have a game-controlling quarterback at the point to run the offense or the power play. The Sabres are lacking an abundance of size and your best face-off man, Paul Gaustad, is not on the ice enough given that he is a third- or fourth-line centre.

Oh, and did we mention leadership? Craig Rivet is a good captain and a decent stay-at-home defenseman, but overall, your team is not mentally tough. It's always a factor on display when they play a Senators team that takes great delight in singling out one of your better players for physical abuse knowing there will be no real response. Last night it was Miller -- the single reason your team has had any real success this season -- being run behind the net by Chris Phillips. Phillips came in with elbows high and leveled Miller and what did your team do? It looked around with that 'what happened' glaze from what, aside from Myers, was the softest part of your lineup on the ice. Happens every game Lindy, just like it did way back when Chris Drury was in the lineup and George Bush was in the White House and Chris Neil took his head off with no response. And they wonder why they can't beat Ottawa over 13 months of trying?

While we're on the subject of Miller, does it not seem obvious to you that you are overplaying him again? I get the why, you don't have faith in your backup goaltending, but that's been the case since the Dominik Hasek era and either you adjust or management springs for a backup goalie you can trust. Look, I get it, Miller's a franchise player, but he's no horse and you're riding him too hard. One can make a case that you did that last year before Miller got hurt, and the year before that. Sure he wants to play a lot, but look where the goals are going in and how. Miller is at his best when he challenges, did you see him do that vs. the Senators or Pittsburgh or did you see the goalie who goes down early and stays there?

And while we're dispensing advice, please take this to heart: Winners do everything in their power to win and that includes fixing an overhead camera that just might give them a go-ahead goal even if they don't technically own it. That excuse came up via a disputed first-period goal that went against your team. To have management say that the overhead goal-cage camera is an NHL's camera and that they've been told for months to fix it but haven't done so is as lame as the response to the hit on Miller or the request for a 'mulligan". What next? A suggestion from MIA owner Tom Golisano to take more shots in practice. Oh, sorry, that one is already on the books.

Dear Dr. Kelley: I made a few comments on a Washington Capitals broadcast recently and it seems I've riled all of Canada. What I said was that the NHL's three-game suspension of Washington defenseman Mike Green was created by a certain Canadian cable television network in Canada and their announcers, sitting there on a Friday night….They made a big deal, and he (Green) winds up getting three games out of it."

-- Alan May, former Cap and current analyst for Comcast Sportsnet in Washington

Holy cow Alan! I'm a pretend doctor not a miracle worker. My advice: get your foot out of your mouth and then read a recent posting from your boss, Caps owner Ted Leonsis where he vows to pull back on helping to foster the impression that it's the Capitals vs. the hockey world. Mr. Leonsis is a passionate fan as well as an owner, but even he admits that he, and by extension the entire organization, has taken criticism of the Caps a bit too personal and that it's time to dial it back a bit. The most stunning part of your allegation is that you seem to believe it and that should be a warning sign to the entire organization that they've taken things too far.