Les Habitants Flames de jouer, en attendant les émeutes

Bonjour!  I'm so hyped for tonight's game that I could tolerate a Frenchman!  I've always been a fan of Tangs so it'll be good to see him again, even if it's on the other side.  I'm also hoping the Flames can keep this momentum we've sustained,  Boyd will be back, which is good and bad.  Good 'cause I like the guy, bad 'cause the team has something going and I'm worried this'll throw a wrench in the works of a functional and successful team.  I'm always the pessimist.

I confess to being a quasi-Habs fan, they're perhaps my second favourite team in the league and have been for quite some time.  It doesn't hurt that they've been pretty good recently, but most importantly they're a fun team to watch.  The atmosphere at the Bell Centre is amazing, it seems to pump up the players who play in the arena (on both teams) and result in a disproportionate number of good hockey games.  Or so it seems, anyway.

I'm not sure why everyone has the hate-on for Bertuzzi as a disappointment.  The man signed for 1 year at $1.95M.  I look at disappointments from the angle of salaries combined with expectations.  My expectations with Bertuzzi were fairly low given his recent years' performances, and the salary is undoubtedly low.  For what he's being paid, I'd assert that Bertuzzi is what I expected and not a "disappointment".  On the other hand, Lombardi's performance has been decidedly lacking and definitely beneath his potential.  Sadly, if I had to peg a disappointment so far this season...it'd be Lombo.

"That's appetizer"

Well, one afternoon into the annual free-agent signing rush, and I am increasingly pleased the Flames have stayed out of it.

Sundin?
Rolston?
Brian Campbell?

Jeff Finger?
Mike Commodore?

Pure ridiculousness.

On the Calgary front, I'm not displeased to see Cujo and Godard go; that said, we do need a player not named "Iginla" or "Phaneuf" to fight fights next year. And while they haven't been out and out shooed out of town yet, can't disagree with what's happening with Warrener and Eriksson.

Nilson, on the other hand, that's a WHOLE 'nother matter.

On the whole Tanguay/Cammalleri draft day tangle, we've stayed fairly silent here; I'm still waiting to see what happens with the cap savings before I deliver a final verdict of any sort. It's unlikely the team this year will be as good as it was in previous recent years, but... I need to see how bad the damage is.

So what's next? Well... I guess we get to see what happens to Huselius etc etc. And, we could use something to shore up those first two lines.

I don't do mornings

...so this is the only way to put up a pre-game.

Ohhhh. The all-important divisional game. This one in particular is a huge one, since should we win and not give up any pity points, we'll be back atop the NW Division. Again.

I haven't been paying much attention to Minnesota this year, but they're on a slight skid, having lost the last two in a row, for reasons (honestly) unknown to me. Check out what Kirsten has to say, maybe. Ignore the Iggy hate, do.

We're building on some good momentum from the latter three games this week. I don't actually think it's a big deal whether Kipper bags a shutout or not, but it was nice for him to finally get that out of the way (besides saving my bacon in a couple of fantasy leagues). I really enjoyed the physical play they put forth against Detroit, though I could have done without Owen Nolan-the-bonehead.

Speaking of boneheaded, that Phaneuf hit on Kopecky looked pretty dangerous, though not intentionally malicious (I don't expect Dion to have a camera in his ass to notice Kopecky's helmet is off). From our experience with various Detroit fans from last year's playoffs, I have no doubt they will join their Edmontonian brethren in labeling Phaneuf a headhunting caveman who relishes small children, kittens, and fuzzy baby seals as his Sunday brunch entree. Whatever. He's OUR caveman.

What little we saw of Vandermeer looked fine, though (as expected) not stellar. Obviously opposing teams will push on him pretty hard until it's obvious he's used to the new team and the new system. Definitely an improvement on Eriksson, and no worse than last year's late pickup of David Hale.

I just want to say one more word about Alex Tanguay. Namely, BOOYEAH. Kudos to him for if not ignoring all the tedious trade talk, all but daring the Flames to trade him. I've pretty much been ignoring all mutterings about Tanguay, because even if it makes sense in a cap world, we don't get that far in the playoffs without him. And TSN and half of Montreal want us to trade him for spare parts? No way in hell.

So! It will be a Flames win, but afternoon games are pretty screwed up, so either the score is way high, or it's next to nil.

Calgary Flames: Offensive Powerhouse

Iginla is on pace for 49 goals, 82 assists for 131 points.
Langkow is on pace for 66 goals, 49 assists for 115 points.
Tanguay is on pace for 16 goals, 74 assists for 90 points.
Huselius is on pace for 49 goals, 33 assists for 82 points.
Phaneuf is on pace for 25 goals, 49 assists for 74 points.
Aucoin is on pace for 8 goals, 41 assists for 49 points.

Now, I'm not saying they're going to keep this up. I sure hope they do. But how unreal is this? We're not so far removed from a time where all the talk was on getting Iginla a playmaking centre and we were winning 1-0 games and proud of it. Now we're scoring goals like it's going out of style, tied with Detroit with most goals scored in the Western Conference.

This does come at the expense of defensive excellence, as we've seen. Normally I'd be upset that Kiprusoff's stats are suffering like this, but the timing really could not be better. A statistically sub-par season will do wonders in bargaining for a lower wage for him, which means good things for the team and a better chance of keeping him and Phaneuf.

I'm not one that thinks you have to choose between strong defensive play and strong offensive play. I'm not seeing anything systemic with the Flames' system that is inherently poor defensively (with the exception of the 4-forward, 1-defense powerplay configuration we've seen on occasion), just lots of little brain lapses, puck hops, and some poor puck control defensively. I think that given the time for our defense to find its groove (and to be fair, half of them are new to this team), this team will become even more of a force to be reckoned with.

Looking at the shift chart for last night's game, the defensive pairings at even strength are as follows:
Sarich - Regehr
Phaneuf - Aucoin
Hale - Warrener

I've been slightly impressed with Hale as of late -- he's better than I expected, and certainly better than Eriksson has been. The biggest surprises for me this season has been the play of Aucoin and Sarich. I was less than thrilled to hear about either acquisition initially, but Aucoin and Sarich have both greatly exceeded my admittedly low expectations. The pieces are all here for a very solid defensive corps, they just need to work with eachother. Every single pairing is a new pairing, and it does take time to slip into that groove and work well together.

Our forwards in the last game were arranged in the following lines:
Tanguay - Conroy - Iginla
Huselius - Langkow - Nolan
Moss - Lombardi - Nilson
Smith - Yelle - Godard

Conroy was also initially as suspect choice for a top line centre for me. But distributing the scoring power across two lines is clearly working, and who am I to disagree? I also think Lombardi and Moss can work some magic together, though Nilson's more of a dud on that line (but decent defensively).

I'm also liking the grit the team seems to have compared to last year. Both the intangibles (like last night's come-back victory with five unanswered goals) and the tangibles (Flames are tied with the Ducks for most fights this season with 10). [Sidenote: The top 10 teams in terms of number of fights are all Western Conference teams. Real hockey!].

I can see big things for this team if and when they find their groove and start firing on all cylinders. The inconsistency (period 1 last night and the entire SJ game) is a bit upsetting, but not at all unexpected at this point in the season. As Leanne has pointed out, the passing is suddenly "crispy" as opposed to "crunchy" rather suddenly in the 2nd period last night. Maybe Keenan is getting through to the boys.

Clarification from Leanne: I actually didn't have an opportunity to watch last night's game, but the crisp passing is something I've observed in several games this season, already. This is something Keenan's specifically been working on in the team - recall all those statements about "muscle memory" early on. I rather like this - work on the simple things, like making clean passes, and suddenly the hard things aren't quite so hard.