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Calgary Flames

Flames Extend Coach Sutter for Two More Seasons

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Brad Treliving has been busy with his signings this summer. Now that he’s completed his work with the players, the Calgary Flames turned his attention to the bench. Head coach Darryl Sutter signed a two-year extension on Saturday. It will kick in when his current deal expires at the end of this season.

Sutter, 64, is the defending Jack Adams Award winner as the league’s best coach. He helped the Flames to first place in the Pacific Division in his first full season after joining the team in progress the previous year. The 50-21-11 record was the franchise’s best point total since the lockout, and the team is 65-36-11 in the regular season since Sutter was hired March 5, 2021.

They beat the Dallas Stars in overtime in Game 7 in the first round of the playoffs last spring but fell in five games to the Edmonton Oilers in the second.

“I felt really obligated to Brad,” Sutter told reporters at the Saddledome on Saturday. “When I came here, I promised we would get this straightened back out again. It’s not just a straighten-out, one-year thing. It’s the long haul.”

“Brad and I talked about it all summer,” Sutter said. “The plan was to get our players taken care of. Talk to him and (Flames owner Murray Edwards) and it’s not that hard to figure out. It’s still the basis of what I said when I came here. Good team. Good city. Good owners. It wasn’t that hard.”

The Calgary Flames have been busy. Treliving has signed Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar to long-term extensions after bringing them over in the Matthew Tkachuk trade. He also added Nazem Kadri in free agency.

“I really like our team,” Sutter said. “Quite honestly, it’s a mature group that understands the whole process a lot better for sure than they did two years ago. And that means there’s been a big turnover in that group, which we obviously didn’t expect that necessarily to happen this quickly, right? I still really feel the foundation is there, and it takes time because of the foundation, types of player change.”

Treliving called the Sutter signing a “no-brainer.”

An extension for the GM, who is also in the last year of his deal, seems like the same.