from Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail,

“There’s a bunch of kids here; it feels like Romper Room, but that’s okay,” said Hartley.

Hartley joined the Flames two years ago after winning a championship in the Swiss League with Zurich, reuniting with general manager Jay Feaster, with whom he’d worked previously in the Colorado Avalanche organization. Feaster was subsequently replaced by a new regime in Calgary, featuring Brian Burke as director of hockey operations and Brad Treliving as GM.

Normally, this can create an awkward situation, and Hartley is on the final year of his original contract, with no clear sense of what happens next. In training camp, Hartley was okay with the arrangement and understood that for all the good things that have been accomplished here in the past little while – mostly how the Flames have forged a new hard-working identity after playing for years as a tired, old squad – the bottom line in professional sport is winning, and Calgary didn’t do enough of it last year. So he’s trying to navigate that fine line – balancing the need to develop players with the goal of winning NHL games.

“Leaving Zurich, part of the talk was this team had to go through a rebuild – and you can’t go through a rebuild if you don’t show confidence in your young players,” said Hartley.

“For me, it’s a very easy equation. If you put tons of pressure on those kids, they’re going to crumble. You don’t give them a chance to succeed. So we’re giving them challenges and they’re having fun and they’re working hard. We’re making everything possible.”

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