The Calgary Flames fired head coach Glen Gulutzan on Tuesday, after another disappointing season in which the team finished 37-35-10, fifth in the Pacific Division, and missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs by 11 points.
Calgary made the playoffs during Gulutzan’s first season at the helm.
Along with Gulutzan, assistant coaches Dave Cameron and Paul Jerrard were also fired.
“Ultimately, you are what your record says you are, but I felt in order to get our team to the level it needs to get to, and each individual to the level he needs to get to, that we had to make this decision,” Calgary general manager Brad Treliving said (h/t NHL.com).
Calgary scored an NHL-low 61 third-period goals, and had a home record of 17-20-4 which was the fourth-worst in the league.
“We underperformed,” Treliving said. “When you go through the process of underperforming, you pull everything. It starts with myself, player decisions, personnel decisions. You go into the players’ performance, who played well, who didn’t and why?”
“Glen’s a good coach,” Treliving said. “Glen is a wonderful person. We didn’t get our team to the point that I felt we needed to. I thought we underperformed. I thought we had a group of players underperform. There’s parts of our game, when you look at certain special teams, that underperformed. You look back and say, ‘How do we get it there?’ I concluded that to get us there, we needed to make a change.”
Gulutzan was 82-68-14 in two seasons with Calgary and in four NHL seasons (Dallas Stars, 2011-13) is 146-125-23.
