Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

I have to admit, I've been trying to stay away from the Flames this weekend. No reading the papers online, barely touched all the goodness that is the hockey blogosphere. I did listen to part of the game before it was time to hit the bar for St. Paddy's, but sigh, I heard enough.

Part of it was the exhaustion that resulted from doing the liveblog the other night. It was a lot of fun, I was flattered that so many of you stopped by and camped out, and I totally want to do it again. But it was more tiring than I might have thought it might be. Worth it though!

The other bit is (as everybody I'm sure is doing) trying to decide whether I want to look hard at the Flames right now. The way the last couple of weeks have been, I wonder whether they're so brittle that looking at them the wrong way might just break them into little pieces.

It doesn't look good, does it? The abysmal road record wasn't much more than a curiosity going into this month. Now it's a glaring weakness. The idle speculation we had about Playfair and how he might feel about his job security has turned into a fairly common rant amongst Flames fans and the mainstream media. We've dropped two games against divisional opponents over the last couple of days, and Colorado is within striking distance as of tonight, a mere four points away.

And it gets worse. The remnants of our last real homestand before the playoffs consist of games with Nashville and Detroit. The remnants of our season consist of a road-heavy schedule against teams we won't eat for breakfast (or midnight snacks).

I don't know where we're going. I'm not ready to do a post-mortem on the season (and post-season) that was, but at the same time, I have to acknowledge that it doesn't look good, eternal optimist though I am. I don't see Sutter deciding to walk into the dressing room tomorrow and taking over - I am convinced at this point that barring, say, a Stanley Cup win, Playfair will have a different job next year, with the Flames organization, or outside of it.

I will say this much more. If the guys can pull through this and fight to keep that playoff spot, I will be much more confident about their chances making it through more than one round of the playoffs. They will have managed to prove that they can pull together through adversity, through challenges, through a whole lot of shit that's getting thrown at them.

Will it happen? I dunno...