After an insane weekend of news in Calgary over the past couple of days, the Calgary Flames continued to dominate the mainstream NHL news cycle on Monday. The now-infamous Don Maloney interview seems to have made waves not only in Calgary but across the entire NHL landscape.
Fan backlash was expected, given the tone-deaf attitude from Maloney, but I don’t think many could’ve expected the biggest names in NHL media to also question the Flames’ President. On their respective news hits yesterday, two of the sport’s biggest insiders had some choice words for the way Maloney has handled the Flames’ tough season.
Elliotte Friedman was perplexed by the organization’s decision
On his 32 Thoughts podcast on Monday, as well as on Saturday Headlines, Elliotte Friedman brought up the Maloney interview. The NHL’s top insider seemed quite puzzled about why things went down the way they did in Calgary. Here’s what he had to say on the matter.
“I thought this was self-inflicted by the Flames. I talk about this a lot in Canada. In the in the Canadian market, there’s a lot of noise just because of all the attention on these teams. What you can’t do is pour gasoline on the fire, and I thought last week Calgary poured gasoline on the fire. Uh, Don Maloney did some interviews. Brendan Parker did a great job during the intermission of the Buffalo game and Eric Francis milked that for clicks.
Friedman nails it here. Coming from one of the most connected guys across the league, it’s certainly telling that he’s willing to come out and criticize the Flames like this. Friedman is typically a guy who doesn’t pick sides and just reports the news, so the fact that he was willing to come out and suggest the Flames messed up speaks volumes.
He’s also completely right. The mid-game interview already created such a storm among the Flames fan base, and Maloney then doubled down with his interview with Eric Francis. Given the current state of the Flames, the fan base is a ticking time bomb. Maloney just poured gasoline on the fire as Friedman said, and made things 100x worse than they were.
Friedman doesn’t understand the timing
One of the other main points from Friedman surrounded the timing of the interview and messaging from Maloney.
“There wasn’t anything on their desk last week that was going to say, “Oh boy, if we reject this deal, we might really regret it in 5 years.” And that was why I think the timing didn’t work because if you got to the trade deadline and it got out that you rejected really good deals because you didn’t want to tear it down, that’s when you go out there and say this is what our vision is and this is why we did it. There was no reason to do any of that [right now]”
Once again, Friedman nails it. Why do this interview now? What’s the point? Maloney just came out and said the quiet part out loud, and for no reason. No one was pushing for answers from the Flames in the middle of November. If it were March and the team was in last and not trading anyone, there would be questions that would need answers from Maloney and co. Right now, this interview has done nothing good except make people angry, and no one needed to hear from Maloney in November.
Frank Seravalli doesn’t mince words on Maloney
While Friedman was a little more nuanced with his criticism, fellow NHL insider Frank Seravalli was not. He didn’t mince words on his show yesterday when speaking about Maloney’s vague responses when it comes to Craig Conroy’s future.
“We’re well into the season, and [a Craig Conroy extension] hasn’t happened yet. To me, it’s wrong and sends the wrong message. “Oh we need to chalk up a few more wins this season before we’re willing to extend our general manager”… We’re gonna have him sit idle and wait? What good does that do, what message does that send to [Conroy], what message does that send to the rest of the team, what message does that send to the rest of the Calgary Flames front office?
The sooner that Craig Conroy and the rest of the Calgary Flames staff don’t have to report to Don Maloney, is the sooner that the rest of this franchise will be better off”
Oof. That last line is a dagger. Very rarely do you see major media members like Seravalli flat out say a team would be better off if they didn’t employ their current team President. However, after Maloney’s absurd interview, it’s certainly warranted.
The pressure is building
So what does this all mean? Well, we know for a fact that Maloney and Flames ownership couldn’t care less about the opinion of fans. However, you have to wonder if getting called out by two of the biggest media members in the league will have the Flames second-guessing themselves just a bit. Perhaps this is the type of push they’ll need to realize they’re making bad decision after bad decision.
It’s simply terrible PR for a team to be getting criticized this much by such respected and powerful people in the league. If Friedman and Seravalli are willing to come out and say this publicly, can you imagine what the rest of the league is saying behind closed doors? The tire fire in Calgary continues, with no end in sight.
