Flames’ Darryl Sutter named NHL coach of the year award for the first time

Darryl Sutter took the Calgary Flames from the outhouse to the penthouse of the Pacific Division.

He was awarded appropriately for the effort.

Sutter was named the recipient of the Jack Adams Award on Thursday as the National Hockey League’s coach of the year after lifting Calgary from an afterthought last season to first place in the division just 12 months later.

“I think everybody talks about culture change,” started Flames general manager Brad Treliving on Saturday, just two days after the team was ousted from the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

“To me, culture is your habits, your environment, it’s doing the right things, it’s doing those mundane, miserable things over and over that make you better and that’s what Darryl does. I said it the day we introduced him. He pushes people to achieve things and it’s not always comfortable, but this, what we asked people to do and having, being successful in any walk of life is not easy.

“Human nature is to survive. It’s just to survive. So to be really good is hard and he pushes people to be really, really good. So he’s brought structure, he’s brought accountability to this group and the group’s embraced it. I’ve said it time and time again.”

“I think it’d be a crying shame if he’s not named the Coach of the Year and I think that there aren’t a lot of certainties in life. That should be one of them. I think he’s done a marvellous job.”

Sutter bested Andrew Brunette of the Florida Panthers and Gerard Gallant of the New York Rangers for the award after backing Calgary to 36-16-7 record and the NHL’s third-best goals for/against differential at a +61 mark.

He said last month his vote would’ve went to Gallant.

Sutter, last nominated for the Jack Adams 18 years ago when he finished third in voting in the 2003-04 season with Calgary, got his group humming to a 111-point campaign, second-best all-time for the Flames franchise. The only one better came in a 117-point outburst in 1988-89 — the year they hoisted the Stanley Cup.

The result came after Calgary played to a pace of 81 points, rounding favourably, in a fifth-place North Division finish that saw Sutter enter as a midseason replacement for Geoff Ward.

It was the biggest season-over-season improvement by any team in the NHL.

The individual efforts matched the collective group, too, as only a handful of players didn’t post a career year under Sutter.

Johnny Gaudreau, Matthew Tkachuk, and Elias Lindholm each put up new personal goal and point totals, as did Andrew Mangiapane and Dillon Dube. Blueliners Noah Hanifin, Rasmus Andersson, Nikita Zadorov, and Erik Gudbranson also set new bars for themselves, as did goaltender Jacob Markstrom.

Markstrom, for the Vezina as the league’s top goaltender, and Lindholm, for the Selke as the NHL’s best defensive forward, were also nominated for individual hardware.

Call it the Sutter effect.

“In this business you can’t be satisfied,” Sutter said in March. “That’s the bottom line. If you’re not trying to get better somebody else is, and that means as an individual and as a team.

“That just tells you what you have to do every day.”