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<\/p>\nIt covers a lot of hockey and life ground efficiently in keeping with Sutter\u2019s mantra of \u201cTalk less and say more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a good story, and there\u2019s some good lessons in it and good advice, and that\u2019s what\u2019s important,\u201d Sutter said in an interview.<\/p>\n
A 32-team league with expansion on the horizon keeps alive the possibility that Sutter\u2019s NHL story isn\u2019t over.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a question that gets asked a lot,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
A team that\u2019s tracking to win a Stanley Cup and one that Sutter feels an emotional connection to are prerequisites for his return. But family considerations drive his decisions because his 33-year-old son Chris has Down syndrome.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way I\u2019d ever go anywhere again is if it worked for Chris,\u201d Sutter said. \u201cThe places I coached, I love those places. I went to Calgary twice, California, I mean Northern California, Southern California, and I basically grew up in Chicago, so those places are more special to me than anywhere else. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you\u2019ve won championships, that\u2019s all that matters. It\u2019s not \u2018I need an NHL job, or I want to be in the NHL.\u2019 It\u2019s strictly if that team I believe has a chance at winning a championship, and there was interest, I\u2019d still be interested for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, there\u2019s combining to do and horses to halter break on the Sutter family\u2019s 3,300-acre spread northeast of Viking. Sutter says he still gets phone calls from coaches and players asking his opinion on last night\u2019s NHL games.<\/p>\n
He was an advisor to the Anaheim Ducks\u2019 coaching staff from 2019 to 2021 before returning to the Calgary Flames to coach until 2023.<\/p>\n
A mentorship role is still in Sutter\u2019s wheelhouse. He questions why there aren\u2019t more coaching advisors in the NHL.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand how the NHL with 32 teams \u2026 how the coaching staffs do not have that type of person with them to bounce stuff off or to help them or watch games and give them different (feedback),\u201d Sutter said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s probably 20 coaches with very limited playoff experience. That\u2019s where you find out what kind of coach you are. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe as the league gets bigger, maybe there is more room for that. When you\u2019ve got a $ 102-million-dollar, or whatever it is now, salary cap and you\u2019re dividing that between 23 guys, I would think that the coaching staffs would definitely be better if they had some of that going on with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story of the six Sutter brothers who all played and went on to work in the NHL is well-told hockey lore and the subject of a 1990 book, \u201cSix Shooters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The barn hayloft where they played hockey every spare second they had after chores also gets its due in Sutter\u2019s book.<\/p>\n
But he drills more into how ranch work shaped his life and hockey philosophy. Thus the title \u201cCode of the West.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was really important,\u201d Sutter said. \u201cWith everything that\u2019s going on in the world now, and you don\u2019t want to make it bigger than it is, but the western way of life has really attracted a lot of publicity, you\u2019d say, in the last few years. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe rural way of life, the ranch way of life, the connection to the land way of a life, that\u2019s why the name of the book was important. The \u2018Code of the West\u2019 wasn\u2019t something that was just pulled out of a hat. It\u2019s something that, quite honestly, if you can live by those standards, then you\u2019re doing all right.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It covers a lot of hockey and life ground efficiently in keeping with Sutter\u2019s mantra of \u201cTalk less…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-926391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}