Flames players “willing to not come back” if Sutter remains coach, Bowness rips Jets, and more: Around the League

It’s certainly been a while since we’ve done one of these! The NHL regular season ahs come and gone, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs are in full swing. The Vegas Golden Knights became the first team to advance to the second round after their series victory over the Winnipeg Jets — but more on that later. Let’s get to our headliner.

This has been something our friends out of Calgary over at Flames Nation said comes as no surprise, but it sure comes as a surprise for us.

Following a disappointing season in which they missed the playoffs, the Flames and GM Brad Treliving parted ways. But the man behind the bench, Darryl Sutter, remains. For now.

In an appearance on Sekeres and Price, TSN’s Darren Dreger said this of the Flames’ situation.

“We’re all waiting for a decision on Darryl Sutter,” said Dreger. “It feels like that’s what’s holding everything up in Calgary. There’s definite pushback I think from Murray Edwards because Darryl has what, two years left on his deal? Murray doesn’t want to lose any money… We could tell by the exit interviews and from the public outpouring of the Calgary Flames’ players in their exit interviews with media that they were fully expecting change. And there are lower level rumblings, and I’m not going to mention the players, but there are some players who are willing to not come back even under contract if Darryl is still on the bench of the Calgary Flames. That feels a bit extreme but that seems to be the direction in Calgary.”

Rick Bowness’s post game press conference last night after his Winnipeg Jets squad fell 4-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights was short and sweet, as the head coach promised it would be.

“I’m so disappointed and disgusted right now,” said Bowness. “That’s my thoughts…No pushback. But it’s the same crap we saw in February. That’s why as soon as we were challenging for first place, and teams were coming after us, we had no pushback. This series, we had no pushback. They’re better players are so much better than ours, it’s not even close. It started back in January, February… We got to push back. There’s got to be a push back. you got to have pride. You got to be able to push back when things aren’t going your way. We had no push back. Their better players were so much better than ours tonight. They deserve to win. They were the better team in the regular season. They were the best team this series.”

The question now obviously becomes where do the Jets go from here? Paul Maurice clearly felt similarly to Bowness, and Paul Stastny also had similar critiques of the Jets last year. Something isn’t right in Winnipeg and it will be curious to see what direction the franchise takes.

Vancouver-born actor Ryan Reynolds’ purchase of soccer club Wrexham FC has been well documented, and the investment has been rather successful for the A-list actor.

Months ago, Reynolds hinted at the idea of buying the Ottawa Senators, but said he’d need a “sugar daddy” to get it done. Now, it appears he’s found his sugar daddy, as the group featuring Reynolds and the Remington Group are prepping to make an offer of more than $1 billion to buy the Ottawa Senators, according to a report from the Ottawa Sun.

New York-based banker Galatioto Sports Partners has been hired to oversee the bids to buy the Senators, and May 15 has been set as the deadline for all groups to submit final offers. The Ottawa Sun also reports that Reynolds and Bratty want to get a deal done as soon as possible and have been aggressive throughout the process.

As a part of their proposal, it’s believed that Reynolds and Bratty would build a new arena for the Senators.

It will certainly be interesting to see if the lifelong Canucks fan who wears his Vancouver upbringing with pride will have to renounce his Canucks fandom if he purchases the Sens.