Thoughts On Calgary Sun's "You Be The Boss" Survey

The Calgary Sun does this "You Be The Boss" 'survey' thing every year.

It's not the greatest of surveys. The questions don't leave a lot of room for nuance in them. Nevertheless it is an interesting exercise, if only as a way to take the temperature of the fanbase at a particular point in time.

If you have been reading me for even a little while, you know that my hobby horse is 'Fire Ken King'. It's been a cause I have been championing for a few years now, as I think he has been a poor shepherd for the club (he meddles in the hockey operations, which would be fine if he had a track record of success in that area, but he doesn't, and as to his ability to run the business, I will say that selling hockey in Calgary is like selling water in the desert, and even then, his ability to do that was greatly enhanced by the Miikka Kiprusoff acquisition and the subsequent (and in hindsight, flukey) run to the Cup finals.)

So imagine my surprise when, while filling out the 'You Be The Boss' survey this year, I saw Ken King had his name included in the survey. 77% of the people who answered the question chose to 'Let him go'. I must be convincing at least some people.

I had to check last year's survey to see who was on the list, and it turns out Ken King was not on the list last year ( http://www.calgarysun.com/2012/04/08/flames-you-be-the-boss-results ), which, again, speaks to the changing perception that the fanbase has of the front office. If I played a little part in it, I am pleased.

Now, what I thought was interesting about the results themselves was that the Ken King question got a very different response from the survey takers than any other question. Generally very few people skipped answering any of the question; the skip rate ranged between 2% - 5%. On the Ken King question, the skip rate was 51%.

Does this mean anything? The fact that the skip rate was so abnormal suggests it means 'something', whether that is a big something or a little something, I really don't know. One theory I am kicking around is that many people either don't know who King is and/or didn't think they knew enough to answer the question, and those that did know the name or felt they knew enough to answer the question wanted him fired (which is interesting). There could probably be other explanations, but look, I will be real: as a pamphleteer peddling in propaganda, I am not really interested in fleshing them out.

Whatever the explanation, I think the very fact King's name is being thrown around when discussing what ails the team is a good thing. The more asses you can put on a hot seat, the better, as we need the front office to start performing.
...

Other thoughts on the survey:

Ya'll aren't as madly in love with Steve Begin's accent as I am, it seems. That hurts, Flames fans, that hurts deep.

Always amused by the votes on the assistant coaches. Because I am sure people have an understanding of their role on the team, and all that (yes I am smirking). The coaching staff generally received ok marks, they all hovered around 80% approval, which I take to mean that the fanbase blames the front office for this season more than they do the coaches (ie: they think the players the front office provided the coaches were not great).

That's generally in line with how I feel about the coaching. I don't think we got the best coaching in the league, but I don't think they took 10 points off the record or anything.

The other thing that made me laugh was the votes on Feaster. Last year Feaster had a 69% approval rating, while this year his approval rating was 50% (with 48% or respondents wanting him gone). At first glance I thought the 50% approval rating was high, considering the O'Reilly fiasco. However, looking back at what he got last year, and a 20% drop is pretty steep. It certainly appears the fanbase is only ready to give him one more year before they demand his head on a pike as well. As well they should.

If anything else caught your eye, leave it in the comments. I didn't really find the 'Burning Questions' all that important or sexy. Again, I think the take away from the survey and the questions is that people think the front office needs to start performing better. I would fire them all, myself, but that's me.

Oh wait! Sun Sports Editor, I have a beef with you: Why didn't you ask about the goal song or the TV broadcast booth in the survey?

Furthermore, I think Ken King should be fired.

Hey Calgary Flames Can You Fire Ken King Please?

Please?

Pretty please? With a cherry on top?

...

Quickly, my list of "Things I Would Change", ranked in order of importance.

#1: Goal Song*

#2: TV Broadcast Booth

#3: Beer

#4: Front Office


The front office has sold the fans a bill of goods for several seasons now. I would fire them. Ken King brought in Feaster and friends, who have been a disaster. Firing Feaster and Friends probably is a useless move if King is allowed to stay on and replace them. He's not a great judge of GM's.

Seriously, he is on his third GM now? Button, Darryl, and Feaster. Do most GM's get three coaches? And the scary thing is, of course, the rhetoric kinda hints at that they may be viewing next season as the start of the rebuild. Which probably means Feaster has another three years of rope to hang the franchise with.

Mazel tuv.

Have I talked about 'hope' before? It's based on 'faith', which is based on 'belief'. I you don't have belief, it's hard to have faith, and it's impossible to have hope. I don't believe in the management abilities of the front office. So I don't have any faith in them to turn this ship around in under seven years (which would be 11 years out of the playoffs). So I have no hope. I doubt I'm the only one with this thought process. The consequence of a lack of hope is a that it kills the interest in the team. You could already see that the second half of the season when the Saddledome, although sold out, looked like it was missing a number of people in the stands.

Firing King would mean that you bring in new people (#analysis). New people (with qualifications)? Belief springs up again, which allows us to give the new crew the benefit of the doubt (faith) and the franchise can once again sell 'hope'.

The added, additional benefit? I don't know if you know this, but I am going to tell you a not so secret secret: NHL teams do not like dealing with the Calgary Flames (and not because they drive hard deals, but because they leak trades before they happen, they agree to trades and don't follow through, they overpay free agents, and they offer sheet people in shockingly dumb fashion). If you fired King and his Kronies, that stigma probably goes away as well.

Is this hard to figure out? Let me know if I should go slower.

* On the infamous goal song: I went to the last game of the season, and we stole some pretty sweet seats due to the fact that about 5000 of the fans are indeed true bandwagoners (I mean, it was Kipper's last game at home, potentailly forever, and the fanbase couldn't muster a true sell out. Kinda pathetic.) The lower you go you both get more corporate and more family, and so we were sitting by the latter half of that equation. A Flame scored a goal and the little girl we were sitting by, maybe 5 years old at the max, started signing the goal song.

I hate the goal song. That won't change. But I can sorta see the appeal now I guess. Little girls like it, so their Dad's do, too.

Furthermore I think Ken King should be fired.

About A Week Out Since I Promised To Change The Girls I Still Have Not Done So

(It suddenly becomes apparent why I can't keep a woman long term...)

Lolzipops boys and girls, how ya'll doing?

I hope you are all doing well. As I write this I am staring out a window into the bright sunshine. It's quite pretty. It's also a trap, of course. The sun is out but it's -5 outside. A Calgary mirage, if you will.

...I was going to use that little opening to talk about Iginla, but I can't bring myself too. It seems too harsh. I feel like accusing the guy who spent a decade and a half hear spearheading the team on the ice but off it too of being a mirage might be a step militant, even for me.

However, I can't help but notice the speed in which he has...abandoned the city which embraced him so warmly. 

"Abandoned" is undoubtedly too heavy an adjective to use. Fuck it, I'm using it. I might not have used it had Iginla not smiled his ass off in barely contained excitement at the press conference to announce he was being granted a ticket off the sinking ship, but he did. So I will.

And now the word comes he is selling his relatively newly built home in  Calgary. He didn't even wait until the current NHL season is through. How rude.

There is some neighborhood scuttlebutt around why he is selling the house. If you live in the neighborhood you would have heard it, and if you don't then you may not have. I'm not in the Iginla's circle of friends so I have no idea if the hearsay is true or not, and instead of speculating on it, on something that is essentially ether until it becomes tangible, I will speculate on the motive of the sale based on what is out in the public: Jarome has no plans to re-sign here.

I don't think this particular revelation is shocking, or even news, to most people. I myself was disabused of the notion that Jarome was going to win his Cup in Pittsburgh and re-sign with the hometown team to play out his remaining years when I heard him interviewed by Pittsburgh radio personality Mark Madden, and Madden asked Iginla what it would take to keep him in Pittsburgh, and Jarome replied "It's up to me to play well to convince Shero to keep me."

Not a lot of room for interpretation with that statement, eh?

...

What did I want to write about when I sat down but before I looked out the window...Oh yeah that's right. Some statistics, boieee.

A lot of the shit I talk about here is obvious, and here is another one: Many stats look like they are telling you something, but they incorporate so much data, they aren't really telling you anything.

This is obvious. This is why we don't like ERA or GAA or +/- or .Avg. So why am I talking about this? Mainly as a filter for my own thoughts. I was looking at the stats page on NHL.com because it has two stats that I like. It has the 5-5 for and against stat, and it has the goal differential stat. I have noticed over the years that these stats seem to correlate well with who gets into the playoffs or not, in that teams with positive 5-5 F/A stat and a positive goal differential tend to make the playoffs.

So what, right? These stats don't tell you anything, really. Oh sure, they tell you something: they tell you that a team has a positive goal differential, or they tell you a team has a positive 5-5 F/A, but they don't tell you why, and it is the why that is actually worth anything.

Because once you know why, it is a simple task to figure out how. (The trick, of course, is being intellectually open enough to realized there could be a multitude of variations on the how.)

I've run out of time, I'm afraid. We will have to revisit this topic.

Furthermore, I think Ken King should be fired.

I Promise Tonight I Will Change The Girls

I had a rant or something but as I sit here to write it I am totally blanking.

I mean it is what it is. The death march doesn't get my panties wet.

I've been watching more of the games then I thought I would be. I find myself cheering for the team to lose, obviously. Tanguay has been great on that front; if we somehow find a way to catch Colorado the team should pay him Cervenka's bonuses.

Glencross keeps trying to monkey wrench the shit. Someone needs to sit that boy down and have give him a little bit of a talkin' to.

Don't look now but Carolina is making a late charge for the top spot of the loser division as well. And they have Russians.

Gonna be a close thang.

But then what? What comes next? Draft and junk followed by free agency overpay day?

Are any of these events going to be bringing us closer to the promised land?

I've written before how I suspect the front office was putting off rebuilding because they were scared. And I think this year was an example of that. I mean, they spent money going into this year! This team was sold as being better than last years version. Only a couple of points away, they said. Add a few players, they said. And now we are battling for last place.

Someone in the front office made a bad forecast. Thank the fates that they miscalculated so bad we were out of contention before the trade deadline. Now I have been quite vocal about not being a fan of either the Iggy or JBlow trades, however, I do wonder if the team would have made them if we were within one or two points of a playoff position when the trade deadline came around.

That is, I have a bad feeling about the start of the rebuild. I have a bad feeling because I think it was kinda forced upon the front office. I don't think they had the intention of going for the first overall pick of the draft when the season started. And I don't give the guys running the show the benefit of the doubt when it comes to strategic planning, because the last decade happened.

I hope they aren't plotting their course as they walk it, but I operate under the assumption that they are. So far the only defining characteristic we have seen in the admittedly young rebuild is that we are mining the college ranks.

And while scouting talent is awesome and good for them for doing it, I just don't think college players are a giant untapped pool of unexploited talent. Like, they were in the 80's when Fletcher started mining the college systems, but my calender says it is 2013.

What I am trying to say is that I don't see a shortcut. And I don't trust the front office to be able to rebuild without the aid of a shortcut.

So I am terrified. I am terrified that they will approach the draft and free agency in some completely irresponsible and ultimately incomprehensible way. I am terrified they will somehow find a way to fuck it up.

And really, that's probably just from years of condition acquired from being a fan of this team. We probably, most likely, hockey gods willing, will have a top three pick in the draft this year. Those can be fucked up, however, and I wouldn't put it past the Flames. I shudder to think about which one of this years mercenaries they decide to back the dump truck up to, but my real concern is that they trade some of the surplus picks that they have for a bad hockey player on a bad contract.

I'd like to see the club not do that, not because I value late round first rounders all that high, but because my personal preference would be to see the team lose out next year as well.

I'm working on The Dome Beers Unified Theory Of Hockey, and one of my hypothesis is that it takes at least four forwards and two defencemen (and by that I mean of the top 20 guys at the positions in the league) plus a solid to above solid aka elite level goaltender to have a legitimate shot at making a run for the Cup.

I don't think we have any players like that in our system at any level. The easiest way to get those players is to draft them, and the only way to draft them is to draft, usually, at the number one spot. Hence, I'd like to lose next year, and that way we should, Whalen willing, have at least some building blocks in place.

Vive La Mort

Furthermore I Think Ken King Should Be Fired. 

My Introduction For A History Paper

History, dear Reader, is a peculiar art and a strange science. A school of study of past and very often ancient events conducted by animals who have it in their nature to disagree about how an event freshly born in front of their eyes, in the contemporary moment, unfolded. 

Such a hindrance to our understanding of the universal truth of any event is not to be derided, as it is imprinted on our very being. Since Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, our species has lost the gift of naïve ignorance, and instead been cursed with the affliction of curiosity. And any hope of uniformity of opinion for the species was dashed and torn asunder when the Deity, jealously protective of his home in the High Heavens, cursed us with diversity of dialect (and hence culture), at the foot of the Tower of Babel. 

We must accept, therefore, a certain inbred inability to arrive at consensus. Indeed, the events of the Titanomachy show us that even the gods bicker; therefore, what hope does the mortal have at achieving uniformity of thought?

This affliction affects the historian in a cruel way, as it is he who is tasked with sifting through the ancient dust of a not always fossilized past, to find a strand of truth in the archaic abyss, and introduce it to the skeptical light of the modern (contemporary) day. Add this to the species pestiferous preference for the Now over the Then, and we can see another obstacle that impedes the historians ability to glean from the archives true truth: the omnipresent pressure to fit one’s findings into whatever zeitgeistian mold is currently in vogue.

Spirits, being constituted out of the material of the ether, are (probably, but not exclusively, to the benefit of mankind) temporary. The spirits that provide a subliminal skeletal structure to Man’s mental regime change form (and hence the flow of our thoughts) over time and events. Cerebral Standards rise and fall on the battlefields of thought, depending on temporal and temporary circumstance. 

In our current age the secular Standard is raised. Secular issues are thus elevated in their importance, while ecclesiastical episodes wane in theirs, relative our use of them to define the ‘truth’ of an event or set of circumstances. 

It is because of this peculiar phenomenon that, in contemporary times, things that may appear obvious to the people at the time of an event appear to a historian observing the events through musty books and contemporary filters as utterly ridiculous. Because the contemporary viewer is not haunted with the spirit of a particular time, they find it impossible to believe that the people of the particular time were haunted by it either. Secret motives are sought, undercurrents are mapped, and the minutia surrounding an event can be elevated to the central stage of ‘Cause’ in the equation of ‘Cause and Effect’. 

This phenomenon, I submit, dear Reader, is perhaps what is responsible for the stripping away of the importance religion had on the people of France during the Wars of Religion by the modern scholar.

Iginla Traded By The Flames

For nothing.

Jarome Iginla Will Not Re-Sign With The Flames?

Heard on SNET's 'pre-game'. Eric Francis was being  interviewed by the Millions Dollar Man, and he offered the little nugget of news that Jarome Iginla will not be re-signing with the Calgary Flames.

I hadn't heard that before.

Apparently on the FAN960 morning show they had Nick Kypreos on 'confirmed' the news, also saying that he has heard that Jarome Iginla will not be re-signing with the Flames.

Shit is fucked up, homie.

Ken King's stewardship of the club has been such a disaster that Mr. Calgary Flame, Jarome Iginla, will no longer entertain being a Calgary Flame.

Let that swirl around your dome for a while.

You guys know who Isiah Thomas is, right? I know some of you are hockey shut-ins and don't watch other sports. Isiah Thomas was a Knick legend, and after his playing days were done, was brought back into the organization to run the whole show. He was a disaster. 

How did 'Zeke' get the job of running the Knicks? The owner loved him. How did Zeke keep his job of running the Knicks (into the ground)? The owner loved him.

Because the owner liked the guy, he was able to get away with terrible ROI (for lack of a better term/concept) year after year.

Knick fans were fucked. They had a person who was terrible at running a basketball operation running their basketball operation. The owner loved him so he was never going to get fired for poor performance. The fans of the team were fucked. But then a miracle happened. Isiah Thomas sexually harassed an employee in the Knicks organization. Suddenly the embarrassment became too embarrassing for the owner, and he let Zeke go. The team has performed very well (in relation to where it was) since Zeke has been let go.

Quite honestly, I think the Flame fans find themselves in the same situation. Murray Edwards likes Ken King. Because Murray Edwards likes Ken King, Ken King's performance (or to be more accurate, lack thereof) isn't an issue to him. Flame fans, we are fucked. Pray for a miracle, I guess.

Furthermore I think Ken King should be fired.