Newsflash: Brian Burke Does NOT Eat Kittens.

So John Buccigross wrote a piece in ESPN today that will be much-discussed for a bit. And it wasn't even about an NHL player.

The piece essentially talks about the difficulty of being Brian Burke's son, especially when you're gay. And working in the hockey business itself.

It's been a long-acknowledged truth in professional sporting leagues that to come out of the closet is to commit career suicide. And the treatment of gay rights in pro sports, particularly those in which what goes on in the locker room nearly as key as what happens on the ice or court or field is pretty superficial. In hockey, there's the comic treatment delivered in stuff like the film Breakfast With Scot.

The only other time it comes up are dark, awkward moments, such as in the interviews the press had with Theo Fleury earlier in the season, where he admitted that one of the demons he had to slay was trying to figure out if he was homosexual. The subtext being, And that wouldn't have been ok. I would never be able to play if that were true. But given the terrible events that did happen to him, this was not really at the forefront. And shouldn't have been.

I hope Brendan Burke's example will be one that provokes thoughtful, reasoned conversation. I hope I don't have to read some random tidbit that talks about bad, bad epithets thrown out in a game with him or some other player who happens to not be straight present.

To echo Brian Burke's words in the piece, I hope one day this isn't even an issue.

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

And what a difference our next visit to San Jose makes.

Our previous visit is already the stuff of local legend - the stinking up of the Sharks' barn, the cancellation of the wine tour in Napa (Guys? Just sayin'. You coulda had a fabulous time there. And unlike me, you can probably afford it...), the bag-skating over the weekend following, then, miraculously, the Flames playing like contenders.

Simply miraculous.

And we saw results. Last week the Sharks came to play, and unlike the rest of their Western Canada road swing (a swing, which, this year, seems markedly less intimidating than in years before), could not leave the Saddledome with a win.

I don't expect the same type of game we saw last week, since particularly, we'll be the visitors. The Sharks are coming off a 7-1 pasting of Tampa Bay, but they'll know the Flames are not the sadsack Lightning (for one, we already traded our Francophone star to the Habs). Expect a fantastic game. It should be fun!

In other news! I was in the Saddledome Sunday to watch the Hitmen (with a ridiculous 38-6-1-1 record) take on the Swift Current Broncos. And was startled to see no other than Flames prospect John Negrin play for the Broncs, having just been traded there the night before. I will chalk up his unremarkable play (well, he DID get an assist) to having been traded the day before, plus travel. But it was a good game. For the home team at least.

Pregame @ St. Louis: The kids are alright edition

Wait, didn't we just play these guys?

Anyways. I was impressed by the St Louis "who are these guys?" Blues. Fantastic, young team that can easily keep up with the Calgary Langkows.

The last time I watched us play the Blues was when I attended the Flames blogosphere meetup at Schanks; surprisingly, we won that game, but it was a lopsided effort on both ends. I don't doubt we'll see the same thing again. So yeah, seatbelts, fastening, all that good stuff. You know the drill.

Now! I also want to talk about St. Louis' division rivals the Blackhawks. It's been all over the internets; I just want to point out (again!) that they very quietly made a classy classy gesture for their GM... originally it wasn't publicized but it's a big deal now.
These are the guys who should be getting the bulk of the press about their off-ice lives, not the Sean Averys of the league.

Dividing Line

To the casual eye, they look like any two hockey-obsessed teenagers anywhere. There they are, suiting up for practice. And playing road hockey. Tussling a bit. And going to practice. And doing random stuff, hanging out, shooting hoops, going to the corner store.... all that sort of thing.

Except these kids aren't growing up in a random neighbourhood just anywhere, they're in Northern Ireland. That's right, Belfast, the hometown of what was temporarily the favourite team of all fans of Theoren Fleury, past and present. And one of these boys is Protestant, and one is Catholic. Let's just say they're streetproofed in ways we'll never have to be.

They were featured in a 2004 National Film Board documentary called When Hockey Came to Belfast, directed by Linda Conway. And by following the boys through their everyday lives, the documentary illustrates the transformative power of hockey (it's rough, tough, and firmly non-sectarian, not having much of a history in that part of the world).

I found almost every shot of this documentary to have something of interest, whether it's kids doing kid-things, or an image of a savage partisan mural. Conway cannily intercuts light-hearted footage of the kids playing hockey or goofing around with more serious bits, showing the grim reality of growing up in Belfast, never spending too long in either mood. It's a real eye-opener, watching two fifteen year-olds catalogue all the ways you can tell whether somebody is in the right side of town or no, or hearing their parents worry about whether their boys... and their families... will come to harm from this particular friendship.

And the message of the documentary is simple. People can get along. When you've been living in a small small world, maybe all it takes is a crazy sport from somewhere else to show you just how broad your horizons can be.

So if you have an hour free, track down this film and give it a go. Definitely a gooder.

Being tricked into getting up early (AKA: Training Camp)

So I showed up early at the Saddledome this morning to take a look at Group B, primarily the defensive studs, the third and fourth liners, and a load of prospects they're trying to evaluate.

My basic impressions:

They are taking a long hard look at Backlund right now. He was teamed up with Cammalleri (as well as Bourque, and Kyle Greentree at times) for much of the morning. He looks a lot less awkward than he did last year - some combination of not coming off injury this year, being better adapted to his arms and legs, and overall more maturity in his game. While still not great defensively, he's definitely made some strides in this area since last training camp. And offensively, he needs no help.

Speaking of Cammalleri, I like him. He'll be a good addition to the roster.

Nystrom looks like he's spent the summer working on his speed. He was much faster than all the other guys attired in white, though to be fair, Lombardi was sporting a red shirt today.

I liked Matt Pelech. He was paired with Vandermeer (Jim, not Pete) most of the morning, and looked decent. Pardy, on the other hand, was paired with Aucoin and didn't stand out from the crowd quite the way he did last year.

Prust was pretty meh.

Both Keeetley and Irving made some terrific stops all morning long. I'm particularly encouraged by Irving, though I doubt he'll stick with the big club this year.

After a summer off, I'm suddenly excited by hockey again.

Game 3 Postgame: Oh, ye of little faith.

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!

Go Time

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'm going to die from the tedium drama...

I don't know what to make of the team anymore. Not that that's a bad thing, they're just inconsistent, I guess.

Looks like I missed a good one Thursday. My guess is Mixmaster Mike will continue his line-juggling ways (anything to remind the boys not to be complacent) tonight, and continue to emphasize defence-first (we know that works... why don't we do this more, ahem, regularly?) Unlike Colorado, I don't see to remember doing particularly well against Minnesota this season. Definitely not better than seasons past anyways.

Minnesota's got their share of late-season bumps and bruises, the latest casualty being ex-Calgary draft pick Kurtis Foster. When do we get no-touch icing?

If you're getting tired of the late-season roller coaster, 'tis also the time of year to go forth and catch playoff hockey! The Hitmen only sold 9,000 or seats last night, so there's definitely room for more. The team mostly does their thing by committee... besides Alzner, there aren't any standout stars, but these kids could teach the big boys across the hall a thing or too about gettin' it done. They've been smokin' hot this year, have been startlingly consistent, and I'm looking forward to watching listening to them go deep (semester is right in the middle of busy, so unfortunately, I won't be planting my ass in a seat at the 'Dome anytime soon).

Oh. They also all dyed their hair blonde. That means good things, yes?

So...go Calgary!

Back in Action

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.)

Adversity

After a full week of the world juniors, I'm kind of tired of that word.

However, congrats to Team Canada, in all it's man-loving glory. (By the way, if you haven't yet checked out Kyle's coverage of the tournament, get thee there and read away. Good stuff).

Woo!

Not a word that really applies to this week's edition of the Calgary Flames, either. The wins continued to come in San Jose (a game which sadly I missed), and I'm kind of expecting them to keep on showing up. It's definitely a far cry from a month ago, and let's not go back there again?

LA has not been a good team this year. In fact, checking out m'girl kms2's blog (yes, link usually stealthily hidden on our sidebar), you can see that while the Kings have been winning recently, it hasn't been happening nearly often enough.

Easy prey? I don't think so. They've got to want to collect some momentum right now. They have some guns in Kopitar et al., and some real experience, in guys like (he's still alive??) Rob Blake.

This will be a tight one where our guys will have to be pretty aggressive against their scorers, and just play a nice simple road game.

Uhhh... 3-2 for us. Lombardi is long overdue, so him, um, Eriksson gets one for slowly peeking into my good books, and Nilson (because he's been scratched for a while so let's see if he can score one from the press box).

Broken Face + Kool Krys Kolanos + JFJ a Mistake + Deetroyit

According to TSN.ca, Kurtis Foster of the Wild has a "broken face". That's perhaps one of the more bizarre injury descriptions I've seen. Maybe a bit insulting as well, at least if it were applied to Ricci or Smyth. He'll only be out 3 to 5 days, so apparently it's just a minor break in his face.

---

In one of these awesome 2 degrees of separation examples, Krys Kolanos has been playing a damn fine game in Quad-Cities for the baby Flames. 6 points in 6 games since he joined the team. He was my brother's friend's friend from school back in Calgary. A 1st round draft pick of the Phoenix Coyotes, he had a decent rookie year in the NHL before injuries set him back. He attended the Flames training camp this year, and states he'd love to play for his hometown team, but was sent to Q-C -- which he promptly didn't report to, reportedly over salary issues. Sutter recently called him up, worked something out, and presto-changeo he's on an AHL contract and doing decently there. If he keeps this up, I reckon it won't be too long til he lands a contract with the big boys.

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Shock and Awe: Hiring JFJ was a mistake. But a mistake the Leafs will apparently stand by until he makes a huge mistake*.

* (Huge mistake is defined as a monstrous mistake more massive than signing McCabe on his long-term, huge-salary, no-trade, no-movement contract)

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Flames play Detroit tonight at the Joe. Brings back bad memories of last year's playoff run, every time we play there. My brother and I made the pilgrimage all the way to the land of Ford (which, if memory serves, was about a 40 hour drive from Toronto when you include the lineup at the border and the way time stands still in Windsor). The locals were enamored with the beauty of the new stainless steel urinal troughs they had installed at one of the two (I think there's only two!) bathrooms in the entire place.

Will Phaneuf start as LW again? No, probably not. That was pretty funny though. Nice work, Keenan.
Will the Flames win? No, probably not. Detroit's a great team right now and the Flames are wishy-washy flippy-floppy.
Will the Flames score a goal? I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict Yes. At least one. Probably with Iginla getting a point.
Will Kiprusoff have a great game? I'm thinking yes, yes he is. He did well against Detroit in the playoffs, anyway. Besides, there's no talented players on that team, right? Just some no-name Swede who probably wishes he played on a talented team like Vancouver or Phoenix.

Go Flames!

Hell on Wheels

Exacerbating the team's recent problems, the Flames suffered a 10-9 loss yesterday to the kids at the Alberta Children's Hospital. How bad is it? The Flames haven't won a single one of these in my lifetime. That's a lot of sick kids. Evidence from the scene of the crime is here.

Man, when your star d-man bags a hat-trick, and you still can't win...

Fine, back to the kids we actually should be worrying about.

Chicago is the new Nashville. Like Nashville in years past, they're going to be a fast, physical team that just leaves you gasping for breath. There are some weak spots - young players can be exploited for their mistakes after all. And Khabibulin is no Vokoun. Not these days, anyways, we'll forget about the spring of 2004...

That said, there's some good things happening on the Flames. I don't pretend that the win the other day solved all our problems. However, it's nice to see Nolan developing chemistry with at least a couple of other players: Lombardi, over the weekend, and now Conroy and Nystrom. Speaking of Lombardi, the guy is playing some of the hottest hockey of his career, and that's not just due to the dimples. His play has matured tremendously over the last year or so, and he has earned that spot on the first line - provided, of course, we see him playing on it tonight.

It'll be interesting to contrast Lombardi against Chicago's kids. While they won't be conducting footraces all night long, the crazy bursts of speed coming from both ends will be a treat to watch. So hang on tight tonight. There's been some amazing changes in Chicago since the last time we played them, and if both these teams bring their A game, it'll be a gooder.

I don't think the rollercoaster is over quite yet, though I won't be complaining that we're not playing a divisional rival. There's going to be quite a few things we're going to have to see before I'm convinced we've totally turned the corner. Special teams will have to be solid, with sustained pressure whenever anybody's kicking around in the box. I'm going to have to see that third line be plausibly dangerous again. And our d-men will have to look like, well, they left the wheelchairs at the hospital. Stuff like that...

Calgary's still going to win, course. 4-3 for the good guys.

Game day: Preds

Yup, I'm sure most people barely noticed we have a game tonight. For some reason or another... Yes, it's good news. I'll breathe easier (or start hyperventilating, whichever comes more naturally) once I have a better idea what's in store for the rest of the team. The newly reno'd version of nhlnumbers.com (great job, guys), shows pretty clearly that we aren't over the tough spot yet...

Given I spent the last one mewling in pain (I had a flu-induced headache, had nothing to do with the blown lead, really...), I've been looking forward to this tilt for a bit.

The Preds have been easy prey lately. Mason hasn't looked like the starter material he did last year - in fact, Dan Ellis has started the last couple of games for them. They've got some key injuries in Steve Sullivan and Shea Weber (believe me, we're in much better shape with only Primeau in sick bay). It's definitely interesting times for the team though - it's got to be tough to be put in the spot where everybody is interested in the team, but certainly not for its performance...

Chalk up another win for us...I'm hoping now that those so-distracting contract talks are over, we'll be treated to a preview of in-the-zone-Kipper. Even if it isn't quite November yet.

Home again

(Kudos to Dave for running a fantastic during-game-not-liveblog last game. I saw what I needed to - 4 goals by the good guys - and left due to last minute commitments before I could see the debacle of the finish)

I'm in a good spot right now, hockey-wise (we'll ignore the state of my fantasy teams, ok? Just forget them....). While the road trip has to be looked upon as having had mixed results, it was a hell of a lot better than anything we saw on the road last year.

Back to the home barn then... it would be kinda nice to actually pop in a win at home, especially given the pure awesomeness of our record there last year. But the road trip was good. The pressure is off to get that first win, I'm sure they've had some time to gel and bond and get some quality time with Coach Keenan(/sarcasm), so now they have a nice long homestand to get that home-cooking going.

So tonight we've got the Kings. Good news is, they had that long road trip to start their season, though understandably they're not quite as badly affected as the Ducks were. We'll see some hot young talent, with faces like Kopitar and Cammalleri. Pity we just missed Bernier, then again, perhaps it's just as well.

Look for Kipper to shape up - I imagine his game-by-game stats will look a lot better by the end of the homestand than they do now, Phaneuf to keep on playing his monster game with his monster minutes, and the Flames to clock in a win.

Cheers!

Sneak peek

Many of you may be slowly realizing that I've returned to the slacker student life, and now possess the schedule to match. Most relevantly, I don't have much to do on Tuesdays till 3:30.

Which gave me plenty of time to check out the rookie intersquad game. I managed to fit in two periods and about five minutes of the third, so I had lots of time to check out the kids and to chat up some of the other fans.

At present, the rookies are divided into two groups, "A" and "B." For the purposes of the game, there was a Red team and a White team (duh), WEARING THE NEW JERSEYS, and which consisted of players from both groups.

Um, they're tearing out some of the seats in the Saddledome too, and putting in new ones. (Lower bowl, the non-club seat end) Probably about damn time - I'm sure they uncovered the remnants of the cotton candy I dropped there when I was six and we went to see the Ice Capades.

Anyways.

For the time I was there (though they were perking up in the third, from what I saw, scoring a goal to tie the game 1-1), Team Red (featuring Sutter Jr, Backlund, Maki, Chucko, Watt, Aulie, amongst others) was badly dominated by Team White (starring Boyd, Germyn, Van der Gulik). Irving started for Team Red and was replaced halfway by Keetley, while McElhinney started for Team White and was replaced by Lalande.

Notable absences included Daniel Ryder, Krahn (injured again, meh) and Brandon Prust (also injured).

So here's what I noticed for team Red:

• Backlund is totally a work in progress. Right now, he has the build of a stringbean, and still looks a bit awkward. He also needs to learn to not chicken out along the boards and improve his positioning in the defensive zone (he's about as useful as a pylon right now). That said, he's got great speed and a fair bit of playmaking ability, so he could be one to watch in a bit.
• Love love love Sutter Jr. (even if his cousin Brandon is the one we should have drafted). Typical Sutter grit through the game - he was consistently the best player on team Red, especially with Maki and Watt.
• Maki was another good player on team Red - paired up well with Sutter, for what I thought was the best tandem on team Red. (Sorry, WI, I'm waaay too tired to take proper care of the diacritical markings I'm missing on his name)
• Chucko is going to wash out. He didn't show a lot of passion or even smarts throughout the entire scrimmage. For the position he's in, I was hoping he'd show a greater sense of urgency, but it's not there.
• Goalie-wise, Irving was good, though I imagine he's a bit closer to game form than Keetley, after the Summit Series. I didn't get to see a lot of Keetley, but what I saw was some fat juicy rebounds...

And for team White:

• Dustin Boyd is awesome. He needs to fill out a bit, and he'll be ready. We need a Chuck "Shazam!" Kobasew type guy again, and he'll do
• I understand the buzz amongst some of my fellow Flames bloggers about David Van der Gulik. Fantastic work on the few occasions when he was in the defensive zone, plus offensive smarts, plus some grit. I like a lot
• Nystrom and Germyn are in about the same spot, in terms of being very close to making the big team - I think they made more of their opportunities today than Chucko did.
• Team White's goalies didn't have much to do. I got nothin'. Um, rebound control! Also McElhinney skated waaay out of the net once which made me nervous because he literally hadn't had to move all period.

I notice I haven't said much about our prospects on the D. Nobody really stood out, in good ways or bad. We've got several solid but unflashy guys like Aulie (Red), Ramholt (White), Hambly (White), Negrin (Red). Adam Pardy was probably the most physical of the bunch, and I could see him filling in for a (please!) injured Warrener, while Negrin actually managed a one-timer, which is a skill sorely lacking amongst the Flames' defensive corps. Are any of them ready for the big dance? Well... er....let's not go there.

The guys who showed the most hustle are the ones who are fighting for a spot even in Quad Cities - in particular guys like Cam Cunning and Devin Didiomete. A lot of fight there.

All in all, the rookies are what you'd expect the Flames to stock their farm team with - nobody too flashy, guys with decent fundamentals, the kind of guys who will do fine as spare parts as injuries start to mount up during the season.