Hearing from a couple of different sources that one way or the other Ryan McGill will be an assistant coach with the Flames this fall. It has been rather quiet on the McGill front over the past month, with Jim Playfair taking over the reins in the AHL it left him with out a job. Ryan was the coach for the Flames in the A for the past 4 seasons, and will assume an assistant’s role with which ever Sutter takes over as the head coach.
Talked to former Calgary net minder Brent Krahn, he says he recently resigned a two way deal with the Dallas Stars and is expected to be the number one goalie in Austin next year, and will push for a back up job in Dallas in the very near future. Krahn is finally healthy for the first time in a longtime, and looks forward to getting his career back on track this season.
The Calgary Stampeders are a very progressive bunch these days, particularly when I comes to their website, over the past year or so the Stamps have clearly poured money and resources into their website and for fans of the team it has become a real source of all things red and white. They have however rankled some in the media recently, JoJuan Armour as you are probably aware has been kept out of practice because of a heart murmur, and yesterday and today refused requests to talk to the media. As of mid day yesterday you could however read Armour’s blog on the Stampeders website where he talked about the issue. It is neither a complaint nor a compliment it is an observation that the sports media business is changing.
I believe I made some comments last summer that the Stamps maybe going in a direction of taking ownership of their coverage and that it maybe a wave of the future. The uncertainty of the newspaper business and the dramatic and drastic cutbacks in the electronic media likely make moves like the ones the Stamps have made necessary.
It should prove to be interesting to see where the Stamps go from here will they continue to prioritize player and coach availability in house before external media sources get served? They may! At the end of the day the sports consumer will decided where they want to get their info from and the red and white are betting that they will choose the team.
Meanwhile there will be no shortage of arguing back and forth between the Stamps media concerns and the traditional Calgary media on how this issue should be handled.
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Hey Rob, sometimes these teams forget how much free advertising they get from LOCAL media. It would be interesting to know how many season tickets were sold because of the hype provided by local media. maybe you guys just need to let it be known that if this is how they want to do business that you guys are going to pull back from your Stampeder coverage. Obviously it is a 2-way relationship, in that you guys need something to report and talk about but they have to remember that they need local media as well.
- daveHey Rob…weighing in on the Flame’s coaching situation–I’m hoping for Brent or pretty well anybody but Darryl, not because he isn’t capable–clearly he is–but I’d like to be spared more of the worst (and rudest) interviews in the history of the Flames…maybe the history of the world.
David
- David Poulsen