An ominous drum has been beating in the background behind Flames GM Jay Feaster’s tenure in Calgary for some time, and now the axe has finally fallen.
In a move that should surprise nobody around the hockey world, the Flames announced earlier today that they have relieved Feaster and his assistant GM John Weisbrod of their duties, effective immediately.
Feaster was brought into the organization back in 2010 as an assistant GM, was promoted to interim GM during the 2010-11 season and finally given full status at the end of that year. However, his time running the Flames hasn’t gone well from the start.
The team has failed to earn a post-season berth for three straight seasons under Feaster (four overall), and their 11-15-4 record so far this season has them 14th in the Western Conference and likely to miss the playoffs again.
Though wins are one thing, the direction of the organization on the ice must surely have been a factor in Feaster’s dismissal. The Flames have seen franchise stalwarts such as Robyn Regher, Daymond Langkow, Jay Bouwmeester, Olli Jokinen and Mikka Kiprusoff leave town, with little to nothing coming in to fill their spot in the lineup.
The goaltending postion was particularly mismanaged, as the team apparently took no precautions to fill Kiprusoff’s pads. The trio of Karri Ramo, Reto Berra and Joey MacDonald this season has been porous at best, and have allowed the second most goals against in the West. To make matters worse, there appears to be no goaltending prospects coming down the pipeline any time soon.
Then of course there is the Jarome Iginla fiasco, which may have served as a precursor death knell for Feaster. For some reason, thinking that the Flames were still a playoff bubble team instead of a team in desperate need of a rebuild as they truly were, Feaster held on to Iginla for much longer than was likely prudent.
It seemed an inevitability that Iginla was eventually going to be dealt, yet Feaster seemed to wait until the Flames were truly desperate, a time that happened to coincide with Iginla’s play declining and his trade value therefore at it’s lowest. It may be too early to properly assess the ultimate value that Feaster got for his team’s captain and all-time leader scorer, but the general consensus is that two mid-level prospects and a late first round pick simply wasn’t enough.
In defense of Feaster, it has to be noted that the Flames prospect pool has improved in recent years, though that is also easily attributed to their poor finishes. With Sean Monahan, Max Reinhart and Mark Jankowski, the team could be strong down the middle in the near future. Sven Baertschi is a potential top line winger as well. However, this modest stockpile with almost no impact prospects on the blueline or in goal turned out to be too little, too late for Feaster.
So what comes next for the Flames? More specifically, the question that is on everyone’s tongue, what does this mean for Brian Burke?
Burke was brought into the organization back in September as the President of Hockey Operations, making clear at the time that he was not the general manager and didn’t want to be running the show.
However, with a track record of success as a GM in Vancouver, Anaheim and Toronto, doesn’t it seem logical that Burke will take the reigns here? Officially, a successor to Feaster has not yet been announced by the Flames at this point, and Burke has said the team will be searching for a new GM that is not himself. However it does seem as though Burke does hold all the cards in this situation, and it’s clear that he’s the one calling the shots.
Feaster may have had a Stanley Cup on his resume, as does Burke, but he seemed, to this observers eyes, like the game had passed his managerial style by. So it’s no surprise, with his team floundering near the bottom of the league, that he was eventually put out of his misery and let go.
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