“I am not the general manager of the Calgary Flames. Jay Feaster is… I intend to have a background role. I know people think I need to drive the bus all the time. Well, I’m a pretty good teammate, too.” – Brian Burke, Sept. 5, 2013
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Does it really matter whether Brian Burke acted this quickly (30 games) to fire Calgary GM Jay Feaster and his right-hand man John Weisbrod? Because when you look at the Flames’ history of foolishly not cashing in on ageing stars like Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff, and of operating like a Cup contender when nobody else saw them as one for years, how much better would they be today under someone other than Feaster? Then there is this reality: The GM who starts one of these rebuilds never finishes it. Ask Dale Tallon in Chicago, Craig Patrick in Pittsburgh or Steve Tambellini in Edmonton. Or Burke in Toronto, for that matter.
So Feaster gets fired Thursday, or Feaster gets fired next summer. From outside the four walls of the Feaster residence, what’s the difference, really? “This is all about having a parade,” Burke said at his press conference in Calgary Thursday. “It seems very distant on a day like today, I know. The team is struggling, and a guy’s standing up here talking about championships. But…”
Feaster, in Burke’s view, was not starting down the road to building a winning team. So Burke fired him after Mile 1 of a 26-mile marathon, not halfway into Year 1 of a rebuild that will take at least seven years, if not more. “We’re not big enough. We’re not hostile enough for me. I don’t like playing flag football. I don’t like the way we play,” Burke assessed. “You need a blueprint, how to assemble a team a certain way. The (new GM) will have to share that blueprint. We like black and blue hockey here in Alberta. We need to be big and more truculent.”
Even Burke knew that was a word we were waiting for, a call back to his opening press conference in Toronto, where he promised to build a clone of the Anaheim team that won the Cup in 2007. But the question becomes, can Burke do that in Calgary, if he never really found a way to accomplish it in Toronto?
Every new GM says the same thing nowadays: We’ve got to get big and “heavy,” like San Jose and Los Angeles, if we’re going to compete. In Toronto, Burke beefed-up the bottom end of his lineup with players like Colton Orr, Mike Brown, Jay Rosehill and Mark Fraser. But the acquisitions of big power forwards like James van Riemsdyk were few, because no one gives those players up anymore.
Clearly we have learned—and this isn’t exclusive to Burke—that the only way to find the Milan Lucics and Brent Seabrooks of the world is to draft them. Big players—or those who play big—take longer to develop, and pan out less often. In Toronto, Burke spent high draft picks on players like Tyler Biggs (22nd overall in 2011), who isn’t close to being an NHLer yet, Brad Ross (43rd in ’10), Stuart Percy (25th in ’11) and Jamie Devane (68th in ’09). None are locks to play significant NHL roles yet, but again, those types of guys take more time to develop. That doesn’t jibe with Burke’s statement on Thursday: “I’m not a patient person. It can’t come as fast as I’d like it to come.”
When you are in a rebuild, you don’t get “A-level” free agents. They choose contenders instead. What teams like Calgary, Edmonton and Florida can get on July 1 are “B” free agents, as long as they overpay the way Edmonton did to land an Andrew Ference, or years ago, Sheldon Souray. And the way Feaster overpaid for Dennis Wideman and Jiri Hudler, yet now the Flames are saddled with two contracts for players who do not fit Burke’s idea of how the game should be played.
The one good thing about being the acting GM in Calgary, compared to the job he took over in Toronto? “You don’t have to shovel the stable out here before you start bringing thoroughbreds in here, like we did in Toronto,” Burke said. Now, Burke just has to find the thoroughbreds. He’s on the hunt for a GM, and Burke said his list would include younger names that he could mentor, like Paul Fenton in Nashville or Dave Poulin in Toronto, and veteran, former GMs like long-time Flame Joe Nieuwendyk or Mike Smith as well. Those names are mine, not Burke’s.
But like Toronto, Burke is back in the petri dish in Calgary, presiding over a rebuild in his usual impatient, outspoken way. But in this cap system, in a Canadian market, can you build the same way as you might in New York or Chicago? Can you say “I’m impatient” on one hand and on another say you want to build a big, truculent team, when history tells us the only way to do that is through the draft, which takes a very long time? When you’re only valuable assets are youngsters like Sean Monahan, Sven Baertschi, and first-round draft picks, does Burke have another trade in him like the one that landed Phil Kessel in Toronto? And as we watch the Leafs—an improved team, but not a Stanley Cup contender five seasons after Burke took over as GM—are we even sure that program was successfully rebuilt, yet?
This is Burke’s second kick at the rebuilding can. If anyone can do it, he can.
But how fast? Aye, that’s the rub.