It wasn’t surprising that Bob Hartley was relieved of his coaching duties just a year after winning the Jack Adams. What was surprising, though, was who replaced him.
Having spent the previous three seasons as an assistant coach on a mostly bad Vancouver Canucks team, Glen Gulutzan found himself back in a head coaching position for the first time since the 2013 lockout season. Gulutzan’s name had often come up throughout the Flames’ 2016 offseason coaching search – of all the teams with fired coaches that summer, the Flames were the last ones to hire somebody – until it was made official on June 17, 2016.