Yeah I feel Gaudreau and Tkachuk leaving Calgary is not a slap against the Flames and or coach Suter as much as it is against Canadian governments reactions to the pandemic and the still ongoing travel restrictions.
I don’t think it has much, if anything, to do with the Canadian government’s reaction to COVID.
Calgary has:
– An old school “my way or the highway” coach in Sutter.
– An ancient (by NHL standards) arena. I believe it was built in the early 1980s and even the last major renovations weren’t even done in this century, it was sometime in the 1990s. Compared to newer “hockey first” arenas, it’s really bad and obviously, the players will make that comparison because they get to see all kinds of arenas.
– Calgary is…ummm… Calgary. Like any other city trying to attract employees, there are going to be some that love it, but it’s butt cold, relatively small, and compared to a lot of other hockey markets it’s easy to see that some won’t see it as a top tier destination.
And all this is outside of what is probably the biggest factor for a lot of top players.
The hyper-scrutiny of hockey and hockey players in Canada is off the charts. It’s way beyond being under a microscope, that old cliche was true back before social media, but now it’s like being in a hothouse, under a microscope while being boiled in oil. If you drink wrong from your water bottle while playing for a Canadian team there’s a soc campaign to have you flogged in the public square at noon the next day.
There isn’t any way to really compare it to the US so most don’t really consider that playing in Canada is any different, but anyone who’s played there will tell you it’s WAY different.
