It’s not an exaggeration to call the 2021 season for the Flames one of the biggest failures in a long, long time. New coach Darryl Sutter might have been correct on locker clean-out day when he said expectations were miscalculated for this team. Even still, Calgary fell painfully short of the bar.
The Flames entered this year as a cap team riding two straight post-season appearances and an expensive off-season. They turned out to be a group officially eliminated from the playoffs with four games remaining, and effectively eliminated long before that. So how did this season go so infuriatingly wrong?