Oi, Oi, Iggy!

If there is any team in the NHL that Jarome Iginla must hate with a passion, it must be the Tampa Bay Lightning? Stole the Cup from you, yup. Beat your team the night you break a bunch of milestones, earn a franchise record, and bag five points, oh yeah.

So. Ugly game Sunday night, despite the Iggy-riffic moments. And I'm starting to just feel sorry for Curtis McElhinney. Seems like he never leaves the bench but for when his teammates need to toss a goalie under a bus.

So tonight! We're going to start off the road trip of brutal proportions. In Ottawa, no less. Now, a month ago, I would have shrugged and figured it was an instant win, but they've picked up considerably lately. In fact you can track it to when they traded for Hillary Duff...um Comrie? I'm kidding about that.

One of the things that cheers me considerably about this team is the mounting number of injuries. It lets us rest up a bunch of guys who we'll ride hard through the end of the season and the playoffs, gives the first bunch of guys we'd call up from the farm some experience working in the bigs, and you know, we're still mostly winning games.

Now, I don't like our chances if we were to stay like this for months and months. But for a couple of weeks, I think it's manageable. And useful even, for the long run.

So... goFlamesgo...and here's hoping Iggy breaks his own record again tonight.

Back to the scene of the crime

Welll... last time we were headed into Tampa, we were either far more optimistic, or far more pessimistic, that's for sure...but, time passes, and that was what, nearly three seasons (and a fourth that never was) ago.

Does anybody know whether we won two whole games in a row last year? The good news is, we just did. The bad news is, it wasn't terribly convincing.

The beginning of last game looked good. Really good. And then... the heady joys of being in lush Miami must have got to them, because then they started way less good.

AND they scratched Nilson :(
(To make room for Yelle, but still...)

Fortunately for us, Kipper seems to have got back from summer vacation finally. Not so fortunate has been The Dion's recent drop in play - maybe he was all nervous about the premiere of Cabbie All-Stars (Yes. I watched that yesterday. Erm. That's a lot of man-love for just a half hour. Who knew he had trouble talking up the ladies? That's according to Iggy. I would never, ever, spread baseless rumours. Right?).

Well. Let's go with the tried and true. 4-1 Calgary. We bottle up Vinny, the Big 3 for Tampa bless their lucky stars we did not have #3 back then, and... the winning goal comes on an extended 10 min replay. Jammed in courtesy of Owen Nolan.

IT WAS (AND WILL BE) IN.

Really Overdue (Tampa Post-Game)

(Apologies for the latency of this post, I spent today driving across southern Ontario to visit sick relatives)

That sucked.

I'm getting pretty dismayed with this team. Mediocre just isn't going to cut it. It looks like we are aiming for an 8th seed to take on a 1st seed Nashville and, well, if that's the case we may as well just pack our things and go home now.

Overdue (Tampa Bay Pre-game)

Not too much to say.

It was disappointing to have lost the last game of the road trip in Nashville, but having done a rough survey of everybody in the blogosphere, I think we all vaguely expected that sort of outcome anyways.

That said, it was disappointing to have lost it in the way we did - we were competitive through the first period, at least. I would comment more on the game, but honestly, I bailed out once Nashville scored their third of the night (it's a busy life these days, sigh).

I'm not going to be around for all of tonight's game, and hope to watch the good parts version on Dave's PVR eventually.

This could be a mostly meaningless game, with an Eastern Conference rival, but it won't be, will it? The Herald today raised an excellent point, about how it's just been too damn long since we played them. The Lightning should be less challenging than Nashville was the other night - on the other hand, we know all too well they're not a team to be taken lightly. I note that David Hale is still out of the lineup - here's hoping things will be better for him soon.

Look for the Flames to exorcise the ghosts of playoffs past (It was IN, dammit!) and kill TBay. 5-2 for the good guys. And no bloody double overtimes ;)