Friedman: Mark Hunter ‘could be a name of interest’ for Calgary Flames GM job
By Ryan Pike
11 months agoThe Calgary Flames do not currently have a general manager, with decisions currently being made by interim GM (and president of hockey operations) Don Maloney. The Flames’ search for a permanent GM was briefly updated upon by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on Friday’s edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast.
Here’s Friedman:
“Flames, sounds like they might start to do some GM interviews maybe over the next week or so. I think they’re going to get closer to doing some actual conversations here. But one of the names I’m kinda wondering about here is Mark Hunter from the London Knights. That’s a name I could see potentially having a conversation with the organization, if not.. I’m so careful about terms now, conversation, interview, you get caught on semantics so much. It’s not worth the aggravation. I think he could be a name of interest.”
Now, before anybody jumps to conclusions, let’s reiterate Friedman’s phraseology: he used “could” twice, “potentially” once and “wondering” once. While Friedman doesn’t tend to bring up names willy-nilly, he also went out of his way to not say anything was definitively happening. (When he does, it’ll be a bigger deal.)
Onto Mark Hunter. A veteran forward who played 12 NHL seasons and won a Stanley Cup with the Flames in 1989, he’s been arguably the Ontario version of Brent Sutter from a hockey operations perspective since retiring. Hunter’s coached in the OHL a bit, but he’s primarily been the owner and GM of the London Knights since 2000. He briefly left the Knights to join the Toronto Maple Leafs’ front office between 2015 and 2018 before returning to his former post.
Hunter’s been very successful at the junior level, guiding his Knights to three OHL Championships and two Memorial Cups, as well as helming a Canadian World Junior entry to a gold medal in 2020. He’s built up a reputation as a very smart mind in the hockey world, and he’s got the hardware to back up that reputation. If you don’t have a GM and you’re thinking of hiring one, Hunter would be a very logical person to have conversations with for a lot of reasons.
We’ll have more on the Flames’ GM search as it continues to unfold.
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