Jay Day

Acting Flames General Manager Jay Feaster held his after season news conference with the Calgary media on Tuesday morning, and a few interesting things came from it.  Feaster spoke for almost 40 minutes, answering questions on the future and a second straight season out of the playoffs.  You can listen to the entire thing below, courtesy of our friends at Sportsnet Radio FAN 960.

A few things to take from the news conference…first, Jay spoke about the turnaround the team engineered in the second half of the season, through January and February.  He spoke about everyone buying in and spoke about how players that were having issues doing so sucked up and said "hey, why not" and went for it.  Interesting to hear the man at the top lay things out as clear as that.

The inevitable questions about his future came, and Feaster told us the same thing today as he did back on December 28th when he assumed the role of Acting GM.  The team will be going through an evaluation phase over the next few weeks, and his future and plan will certainly be part of that.  I still believe Feaster will be the guy, but the fact that this continues to drag out certainly has me wondering if there are other options the team might be considering.

Jay was adamant that Jarome Iginla wouldn’t be going anywhere, while admitting he understood why the speculation around his future exists.  Feaster and Iginla will have another meeting next week, but it’s safe to say the captain is staying put following a 43 goal season.

Both Alex Tanguay and Curtis Glencross are obviously on the radar for the Flames, and Feaster said the goal is to have both of them back next season.  A few interesting things comes from that.  Jay said it is possible for both players to be back next season, even with them both being due big raises.  He also spoke about the options the team might have to free up flexibility, and didn’t seem totally adverse to the possibility of placing players like Niklas Hagman or Ales Kotalik in the minors for an entire season.

Finally, the backup goaltender situation was addressed, with Feaster fully endorsing a return of Henrik Karlsson to take an even larger load off of Miikka Kiprusoff for next season.  He was asked about Leland Irving and said he wants the AHL tender to compete next year for a starting job, but said the goal was to have Karlsson back.  That doesn’t sound very promising for Iving’s prospects next season.