Former Flame Says Past Head Coach Not Named Sutter Completely Divided Team

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TJ Tucker
July 29, 2023 (8:20 PM)

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Usually when we're talking about rifts between players and coaches in Calgary, it involves Darryl Sutter. Sutter was fired at the end of this past season, with more than one player coming out and saying the team wasn't gelling under him. However, long-time member of the Calgary Flames Matt Stajan spoke about his experience in the city in a recent interview, and had nothing good to say about another head coach.

Stajan says Bob Hartley, who coached the team from 2012 to 2016 was a "d**k" who purposefully divided the room.

"I remember being in the dressing room, and we hashed it out one day as players. The room was divided. [Hartley] had said something in a meeting during video. He attacked six or seven of the bottom-six guys, bottom [defencemen], and we came in and I was like 'that can't happen, our teams divided. He can't treat this half of the room one way, and the other half another way.' I said it to Bob, too, but Bob didn't listen to players.

The Flames made the playoffs once during Hartley's four years there. Hartley won the Jack Adams trophy as Coach of the Year in 2014-15. Calgary, however, lost in the second round of the post season. Stajan said the team went rogue and decided to ignore Hartley's attempts to divide.

"Everybody started realizing what he was doing. And this is right after we had success the year before. We made the playoffs, we were a good group. Once you could start seeing a little divide, we had that meeting and were like 'we can all hate the coach, we all gotta stay together.' Once we had that hash out in our dressing room, all the guys he was treating well started seeing how he was treating everyone else. Then you really start to see that this guy's a dick."

Despite two previous coaching jobs in the NHL, once Hartley was fired from the Flames in 2016, he never coached in the NHL again. He did, however, spend a few years in the KHL and became a beloved personality among some fans. Stajan played for the Calgary Flames from 2009 to when he left the league in 2018 to play in Germany. After one season there, he retired from pro hockey.