Well played last night, Dallas Stars, well played. Well worth staying up for.
Thank you for avenging our golfers.
This series has been fantastically dead even. It's been great. The ups have sent us soaring, the downs have been lower than low. Being nervous and twitchy from school and the stresses of playoff time, I've decided I can't wait to see how this puppy gets decided, I'm taking things into my own hands.
We have here some of the players from each team. Phaneuf? Lombardi? Roenick?
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I was thinking back to last year's Detroit series and how much more one-sided that series seemed. By the time Noodles had done his lumberjack thing at the Game 5, it was a foregone conclusion that the Flames would not be advancing (as much as we all tried to deny it).
By comparison, the games this year have been a lot more even-handed. That, and the Sharks bloggers haven't really done too much bargin' in and making bold declamations (actually, we've been the ones doing that). That said, there just hasn't been the same air of desperation we saw at the end of last year's playoffs, and really, there ought to be. It is much more go-big-or-go-home time than it was at Game 6 last year.
I think this is the night all the chips go on the table. Right now, all the pieces, such as they are, are here. A top-heavy team, questionable secondary scoring, aging role players, spotty defence, young prospects more likely than not to be third or fourth-line grinders all the rest of their careers.
If we don't win tonight, Sutter can move on to an interesting summer trying to re-sign players with little cap space left, and trying to bring in reasonable replacements for those guys who don't remain. Iggy gets another year older before he has a stab at the Cup, and well, summer can start in Calgary anytime it wants to.
So let's say BOO to all that. Flames in 7.
I'm still in shock that something Sarich did was the catalyst this team needed to take it up to the next level (well, stratosphere in the microcosm of the game...). Let's just say I loved the hit. Clean, I thought. Anyone who thought it was a dirty hit doesn't know hockey. Let's leave it at that.
Needless to say, tonight is big. The Flames can take control of this series with a victory tonight, or the Sharks can even it out yet again. My money is going to be on the Sharks trying to exact revenge on their wounded pride, but I don't think they've got the heart, the balls, the strength, or the know-how to do it. I recognize San Jose's regular season excellence, but these aren't regular season games. What wins games for you in the regular season won't always win games for you in the playoffs. This series is a great example of that.
Despite this strong start to the season, I keep flashing back to last year. By far, the biggest difference between this year and last in the playoffs is the competence of the coach. Under Playfair, I never had any confidence in the team on a game-level (hold the lead), let alone on the series-level. Keenan is showing -- through what appear to be trivial moves -- that he's got experience in this area. The mind games he plays with the officials is a great example. The line juggling seems to be throwing San Jose's defense in a loop. Frankly, thus far Keenan has been out-coaching Wilson as opposed to last year, where Babcock handily out-coached Playfair. I've got to believe the lack of "Nervous Jimmy" biting his nails behind the bench as coach is one reason the Flames were able to have the confidence to come back as they did last game.
That said, I'm still going to cry if they get off to the same start as last game. We got away with that once, but let's not press our luck.
Your typical keys to victory:
1) Stay out of the damn box
2) Get the momentum and lead early
3) Keep up the physicality, make the d-men scared to touch the puck
4) Win
GO FLAMES GO!
Let's just pretend the first five minutes didn't happen?
We're all good?
Good.
Seriously though, fantastic hit by Sarich to really get the guys going. Great effort by Cujo to blank the Sharks the rest of the way, and did anybody else smile at seeing a reaction out of Sutter up top? Now, who knows whether we'll be able to maintain this momentum onwards to Game 4, but here's hoping we do.
More appropriately, I flipped to an episode of Family Guy after the game, and they were in the middle of a Kool-Aid gag.
Try it out, it's plenty tasty!
So, uh, yeah. How about that game? I thought we held our own in the 1st and 3rd, if not holding a bit of an edge in the 1st. But that was a remarkable perfect storm of ref inconsistency + lazy/undisciplined play that comprised our self-destruct in remarkable fashion. Does anyone know the record for consecutive penalties in a playoff period of hockey?
That said, there's positives to be found here. It was "only 2-0" due to Kiprusoff playing out of his mind again and outstanding penalty killing. San Jose has only potted two goals in both games, so if our offense can solve Nabokov as in Game 1, defensively we're pretty good.
Tonight's game will be interesting. We now know Bettman is to be there along with some relatively young officials, so my gut tells me tonight will be another penalty parade and special teams clinic. Not even going to bother with a prediction here, but GO FLAMES GO!
How fantastic was last night's game? The refs kept their whistles down, the players played fast and hard, and Kiprusoff stood on his head. It's the best game I've seen in quite some time, it could've gone either way. There were stretches of domination by both teams, but the bigger top-end talent won out in this game with Iginla and Kiprusoff grabbing the game by its throat, and Yelle playing hard-nosed opportunistic hockey. Just incredible.
But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. As amazing as last night's game was, it was a close one. The Sharks are going to come out flying tonight and the Flames will need to buckle down and nail them with some Open Ice Hits to knock the senses out of the Sharks. I also have a feeling the officials will be a bit more whistle-happy tonight after an uncharacteristic game where they let the boys play. I disagree with Mike Chen of the Battle of California where he says "let the boys play" means "letting them get away with cheating". There was a lot of stuff on both sides that could've been penalties, including a completely missed double-minor on Nolan that drew blood. But the reffing was fair, even-handed, and consistent throughout the night from what I'd seen. It seems to me the Sharks (and indeed, the Sharks fans) simply want more penalties called because they know the Sharks are better on the special teams.
I'm pumped for tonight, but I go in without high expectations despite last night's game. San Jose is going to want revenge, and I expect for them to bring their "A" game as opposed to last night's "B" game now that they know this won't be a walk in the park.
Is it just me or does Joe Thornton shit himself playing the Flames? He had one good point last night, and was otherwise MIA. Clowe and Marleau were the only consistently dangerous Sharks. Campbell got a bit of a rude awakening in that game -- hey buddy, welcome to the West. Have you met Jarome Iginla? You'll find he's a bit tougher to play against than most of the Eastern players you've toyed with in the past.
This is going to be one hell of a series if the pace is anything like last night. I just about died in the last 5 minutes of that game.
Prediction for tonight? I'm going to predict the Flames keep the intensity up and San Jose doesn't know what to do with it, but still an incredibly close affair...4-3 Calgary (Iginla, Phaneuf, Nolan, Conroy; Marleau, Marleau, Pavelski), and Edmonton wins it in a shootout.
GO FLAMES GO!
PS: Happy Birthday, Dion. Remember the party comes after the game, not the night before.
I love this time of year, though I've forgotten how miserable playoffs combined with school can be.
I haven't done a preview for this series, and I'm almost debating whether I should. San Jose I just know as the team of fantasy playoff heartbreakers. I've drafted a couple of guys from there this year, and with the exception of a late-season addition of Brian Campbell to a team in a league where I had no chance of winning, it's been ugly.
In a lot of ways, I see San Jose post-lockout as having made changes in ways we probably should have made changes. They've gotten rid of a lot of deadweight and guys who've gotten older and less useful (hi, Wayne Primeau), and replaced them with lots of youth. Oh. And some guy named Joe Thornoton?
The conventional wisdom has been that there's no point in looking at our head to head record versus the Sharks prior to the trade deadline, since they got Brian Campbell after that and apparently that's made all the difference. I rather disagree with this - they're still playing the same system, after all, and they're 95% the same team. While they're arguably a much more effective team now, I think we need to look at mistakes we made in these games and clean those up. Nothing too earth shattering:
Keep the Sharks' shots down: In a good majority of games this season, the Sharks badly outshot the Flames. More shots => more goals. More goals bad. We need Sarich to be back to the form he was in earlier this season, Eriksson to spend as little time on the ice as possible, and the other guys to be a bit smarter. Overall, I think I'd like to see the forwards committing a bit more to defense than has been their wont this year. They've done that a couple of times this year, and it's resulted in fantastic results on the scoresheet.
Inconsistency: This one's been done to death. I think we need to remember that as drunken-sailor-wandering-all-over-the-map as we've been, we're not the only team to suffer so. Looking back at the year that was, I see I've called San Jose inconsistent any number of times.
Special teams: We need to minimize activiation of these. Dead simple. Theirs have been better than ours.
Role players: I'm beginning to believe the main battle in this series won't be Iginla vs Thornton, or Kiprusoff vs Nabokov. It'll be Lombardi, Nilson, Boyd, Aucoin against Mitchell, Carle, etc, etc.
Anyways! I'm totally in the mood for playoffs! As I seem to often do near times when we're set to play the Sharks, I had the chance to catch the Hitmen in action last night, and they squeezed out a win for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against my relatives' Swift Current Broncos. And guys, it was a hell of a game! It was also the longest game in Hitmen franchise history, not even bothering to count the twenty minutes spent replacing broken glass). We should be so lucky if any of the Flames' playoff games are this effin' good.
GO FLAMES!
I have nothing. MG has the most fantastic analysis about how this is going to be another short playoff run. I'm going to take another tack and hearken back unto the glory days.
In 2004, the year of the Flames' (insert-adjective-here: surprise, unlikely, miracle, improbable) run to the Finals, Darryl Sutter famously divided up the last twenty-eight games of the season, and explained to the guys that, well, they had four series of seven games each. Win each set of seven, and, you'd be pretty close to a Stanley Cup. He was right, as it turned out.
So how do we compare to that year? Let's find out.
| 2004 | 2008 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Opp | Outcome | Opp | Outcome |
| ATL | W | EDM | L |
| VAN | W | PHX | W |
| ANA | W | CHI | L |
| MIN | W | EDM | W |
| MTL | L | SJ | W |
| OTT | L | LA | L |
| NJ | L | ANA | L | Wins: 4/7 | Wins: 3/7 |
| COL | W | PHX | W |
| DET | L | DAL | W |
| PHX | W | DET | W |
| STL | W | MIN | W |
| DET | L | COL | O |
| DAL | L | ANA | L |
| COL | W | PHX | W | Wins:4/7 | Wins:5/7 |
| EDM | T | CBJ | W |
| OTT | W | NAS | O |
| NSH | T | STL | W |
| STL | W | WAS | L |
| DET | W | ATL | L |
| CLB | W | CHI | W |
| NSH | L | CBJ | L | Wins:4/7 | Wins:3/7 |
| DAL | L | COL | W |
| PHX | W | MIN | W |
| SJ | L | COL | L |
| LA | W | VAN | L |
| PHX | W | EDM | W |
| LA | W | MIN | L |
| ANA | L | VAN | W | Wins:4/7 | Wins:4/7 |
And hope that the Habs don't steal them...
In all seriousness though, this is going to be a long tedious stretch of games, where the Flames don't see the lights of the 'Dome for a week and a half, as they churn through the Pacific Division. There's some tough teams, and some easy teams which have played tougher lately, which is worrying, given our history of underestimating the other guy.
Unfortunately, I too will be on the road, headed for the Eastern time zone, making it harder to watch games...maybe I'll crash Dave's place sometime and hijack the TV.
Anyways! Tonight we play the Sharks, who have quietly been having a darn decent year. They're back on track, and starting to win at home (I think). In terms of matchups, the secondary scoring which has been our primary scoring for the last month will be pretty key, and it would help if our primary scorers (not naming names, but y'know...) could get going too.
Hopefully they've gotten all the penalty-taking out of their system after the Edmonton game... we will get killed on special teams should bodies start piling up in the box.
I'm going to predict a strong start to the road trip, and a Flames victory. All those barns they're visiting... well.
Eight days is WAY too long, though surely, we've already mentioned this.
So... San Jose is a darn decent team. We should beware, especially with as much rust as I anticipate seeing, after a very slack two or so weeks. I don't expect that their acquisition of Jody Shelley changes things much for us, except that Godard probably gets some time away from the press box.
It's important for us to come out of the gate hard, even with Eriksson apparently all better now. The schedule doesn't get a lot easier over the next couple of weeks, so it'll be good if we can build some momentum.
I had the good fortune of watching the Hitmen at the 'Dome last night (for free!), and it was a one-sided affair against the Kootenay Ice. The Hitmen just spanked the Ice. They built a 3-0 lead within the first five minutes (resulting in the Ice's starter getting yanked after four shots), and stayed ahead the rest of the night.
Particularly cool on the scouting front was getting to watch John Negrin (now with Kootenay) play in a real game setting. He'll be... fine. Obviously he's a bit more at home halfway through the season in the WHL than in an NHL training camp, but he was much improved from September. He seemed to show some good sense, made a bunch of smart plays, (not surprisingly) isn't afraid of the physical stuff and was the Ice's go-to guy on special teams. He definitely needs some more time to grow, but I could see him being a third or fourth D-man in a couple of years, with an eye to moving up the depth chart. I do think for now he needs another season at least of development, whether it's still in the W (he's only 18, after all) or in the AHL (my preference).
Anyways, that was good times. It's been a long while since I last went to see the Hitmen, and it was a lot of fun. Hopefully the Flames can make it two nights in a row for good times in the 'Dome...
(Superstitiously NOT making a game-time prediction. But... go Flames.)
Thought I'd missed the beginning of the month again?
Hardly. Here's how the rotisserie league looks. And no, I don't actually wait till I'm on top again to post. Though it probably does add to my motivation to do so.
And the third has not yet happened. But "HOLY MACKINAW", what the hell was that. Is Edmonton contagious? Abysmal. Can't clear the puck out of the zone on EV play, brutal penalty killing and powerplays, miscued pucks all over...I can't even watch this crap. This is a team that's night and day different from what we saw Saturday night, its not even the quality of the opposition that is mattering...the players themselves just can't touch the puck without it careening to an opposing player or skipping over their stick.
I'm also somewhat stunned to see Kiprusoff pulled after a goal he couldn't even see. I know he wasn't pulled for being Cloutier (he was actually pretty good tonight), it was to "shake up the team" or "rest Kiprusoff", but I'm also not convinced the best way to break in a rookie goaltender in the NHL is to throw him to the wolves as was done here. And Nilson on the powerplay? I'm not sure I agree. If things aren't working, the last thing I think should be done is put people on special teams they're simply not good at. It's a sure-fire way not to improve.
There could be some miracle. Some tear-jerking, emotional, bone-rattling speech in the locker room that results in a 3rd period Flames team ready to kick some ass and take some names. But at this point, I'm not very confident. Neither are the Flames.
On the plus side, I thought Sarich and Aucoin (and Hale?) were very good from what I've seen.
On the minus side, (insert everything else here).
So to follow up Dave's fantastic pre-game...
(What? Oh. There's no pre-game? Ok. Um. There was a game. Tonight. Against the Sharks. Which makes it the ex-Sharks vs the Sharks. Exhibition. Go Flames! Moving right along...)
...pretty sweet game all in all. I was worried when Kipper let in the first two shots he was faced with (not that it was necessarily all his fault), but Huselius saved the day. They were handing out lots of stuff with his autograph on it, so I guess he had to made it look good.
Speaking of Good:
Regehr. Most solid game I've seen from him from some time. Was paired with Phaneuf through the last part of the game, and unlike last season, they looked really damn good together.
Kipper. Really crunched down after those first two shots, and was clearly more focused than last game.
Nolan. Really noticed his hockey sense today, and in a good way. He was just always where he needed to be. Er. Most of the time. Well...enough times for me to notice.
Huselius. He just put the puck in the net. Again, and again, and again. Screw all the whispers about him being in Keenan's doghouse come December. He keeps this up, there's NO way that's happening.
Shootout. Huzzah! We win another shootout! Pinch me.
And sigh, there was the Bad:
Eriksson. See my whining and bitching about Andrea from last game. He was paired up with Regehr, Sarich, and Hale through different parts of the game, and only succeeded in making his various defensive partners look better. Sloppy puckhandling, bad positioning, and one giveaway resulting in a goal where neither my dad or myself even had to guess whodunnit.
Officiating. You know that Subway commercial? We didn't get the compensating penalty for no good reason in the second half. Unimpressed. (Ok, I'm biased, and it beats talking about our PP at midnight).
No Lombardi. 'Nuff said. Um, from the vets, also no Aucoin and Tanguay either tonight.
And of course, the Ugly:
Sharks jerseys. Now I keep on confusing them with the Blues (somebody else has made this observation, it's just bloody late and I'm too lazy to properly cite it).
Flames jerseys. I'm just being fair. They're growing on me, but the socks...yeah...the socks.
Wayne Primeau starting the game with Iggy and Langkow. I know they were short wingers tonight (this configuration had Iggy at centre), and Primeau did earn his way up last game, but yeah...some things just ain't meant to be.
Jim Playfair Fashion Police notice: Brown suit, matching tie, white/off-white shirt. Finally inoffensive.
Youngster Alert: The only young'uns playing were Boyd and Sutter, matched up with Moss or Yelle through the night. They got limited play in the second half of the game, as they were looking a bit bewildered at times early in the game.
Entering a code in NHL 08 unveils what appears to be new uniforms for all the teams, including those who have yet to unveil them.
Let's start with Edmonton's ugly threads. The orange striping looks mildly awkward, and I'm sure the fact that player numbers are to be appearing on the biceps will not help.
Next up is San Jose.
St Louis:
And Phoenix's jersey somehow became slightly less ugly:
Source: Calgary Puck.
The Flames must surely realize by now that we're all going to do our best imitations of broken records until they finally get that damn point, we clinch a playoff spot, and then start getting ready for the real games.
I haven't felt all that engaged with hockey this week, and the calm reactions of many, many people I've talked to, in reaction to what was a flat, embarrassing game the other night confirm what I suspect: we're all waiting for them to get on with it. Either that, or we've been too damn busy planning the night we'll all meet each other, slated for later this weekend.
So. Tonight isn't ideal, exactly, to get on with it. San Jose isn't really one of my favourite teams to play when I'm looking for points in a hurry. Their big lines are clicking again, their goalies are getting over the hiccup that was the couple of months after the All-Star game.
But hey, if we're going to get that point? Why not tonight? All in all, tonight should be a good indication of how far we'll go come playoff time. Road game, tough opponent, stuff on the line. Let's see if we can bring it.
So neither of us did a pre-game post yesterday... rather that pretending it was sheer laziness on my part, let's pretend that I was super-confident about the boys now that they're back at home. And there's this other weird effect that happens Saturday night, which I have absolute faith in.
Has anybody noticed their record on Hockey Night In Canada so far in 2007?
To date, they have been on the CBC seven times in 2007. Once and only once did they lose, in a shootout. in Buffalo. And even then, they still picked up a pity point. Admittedly, only two of those games were road games (one in Edmonton, and one in Buffalo). Though given that, and another win against Vancouver in GM Place, earlier in the season, that means 2/7 of our wins on the road take place during CBC broadcasts! Now, I know the games are not exactly distributed evenly such that 1/7 of the games in the regular season take place on each day of the week...
Weirder yet! If you look only at road games on Saturday, you'll see that we have won four times this season playing on the road Saturday nights. We're not playing half our games on the road Saturday nights, I know that much. So what gives? Why are Saturday nights so much better than any day of the week?
(Actually, I suspect it's the opposition. I neglected to mention the wins come against the Blues, Coyotes, Oilers, and Canucks, with the win vs. the Canucks taking place at an admittedly low point of their season. Oh well. Work with me here, and pretend there's some sort of meaningful trend.)
Makes you think...
So my impression of last night's game? I'm still not that impressed. I guess I've been too much of a Sutter convert to not cringe at all these 7-something scores we've been racking up lately. What's wrong with a boring, 1-0 shutdown result? I'd prefer a bit more emphasis on the defensive end, personally, since it looks like the offence packs up and goes home early on the road.
On the upside, we didn't get Drew, and I'm really happy we beat the Sharks. They've been a team that's had our number since pre-season really, and it's about damn time we showed them we can beat them, even if it is an ass-ugly win...
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