The dream lives on...

Is the NHL running through all the vowels in the list?

Here's a hint, guys, it's an "E."

In other news, I'm guessing Keetley won himself a backup job last night, and I see Fleury is on the board again tonight with a goal and an assist.

At this rate, I'll be ready for a nap when the regular season starts up...

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.

Bandwagons Galore

It's no secret I'm a big booster of local sports; so in the spirit of that, GO STAMPS GO!

And with that out of the way, let me add that my hatred of the CBC knows no leaps and bounds... Lee and Crawford deliver the kind of play by play that make me want to rip my ear canals out. Not that the Sportsnet crew is much better... if we don't go far this year I blame the play-by-play crews. They're not responsible for the play of the team, but certainly are a symptom of The Suck.

All about the feelgood!

So today marks the first time Chris Clark has been back to play since he left the Flames after the 2004 Cup run. Dunno about the rest of you, but I have missed him around here, and it's great to see that he's put together so many solid years out in Washington.

And tonight also marks the first time Ovechkin has ever come to the Saddledome to play (I won't repeat the rant, but really, it's about damn time, and really ridiculous that this is a guy in his fourth season and he's finally getting around to all the rinks).

What else? Well, we'll see Hitmen alum Jeff Schultz (Karl Alzner, sadly has been booted down to the minors by the Caps), and hometown boys like Mike Green and Tyler Sloan.

There's a hell of a tear-jerker of a story about Sloan, and why it's a big deal that he's lining up for the Caps tonight. Much respect for the Caps for making the move, it's a classy move all around. So a big congrats to Sloan, and here's hoping he makes the most of tonight.

Well, not too much. I'm not feeling nearly as warm and fuzzy towards the Flames as I am the Caps, today... so... here's hoping we come out strong, play strong, finish strong and do all that stuff playing hockey entails.

Or I would settle for not embarrassing ourselves. Yeah, I could live with that.

Oh. Hockey's back?

Yes, we really have been paying attention. Really. Really hard.

The folks over at Melt Your Face Off asked us about a week ago to chip in a season preview for the Flames in our usual inimitable style.

It's a bit on the short side, especially compared to some of the other previews, but I've been in a wait-and-see mode here. Haven't really passed judgement on anything that's happened in the last three months or so ago, and won't get around to it for a bit. So I looked at the exercise as an opportunity to sharpen my (quickly dwindling) wits for another season. And here goes...

Go enjoy.

The Open Ice Hits Olympics: Cycling

Anybody know how on earth I can get statistics on cycling the puck?

Just trying to patch together some hockey-related thoughts. One of the big flaws with Calgary's game last year was with puck possession. Most of our readers will realize I'm much better at intuiting things than sitting down with numbers and figuring out what the deal is.

A big part of it was being a team not well suited to dump-and-chase well, dumping and chasing all the time. We were just too big and old and slow really for this to be a successful strategy.

The other problem which plagued us with puck possession was of course, MG's much hated STONEHANDS, who really did abound on the Flames roster.

This might be one of the vaunted improvements which the "new NHL" has brought us. In 2004, the game was slower, and our guys were faster, which meant that we could well dump the puck in the other team's zone and expect to retreive it, by outhitting and outmuscling the other team. Now, of course, everyone else is just too damn fast.

Dump and chase against Chicago?
Dump and chase against Edmonton?
Dump and chase again...

You get the idea. Bad idea!

The Open Ice Hits Olympcs: Fencing

Today's post is going to address the Sundins and Sakics of the world; those players who are fence-sitting with regards to the future of their careers.

These are gentlemen who've paid their dues. In the case of aging elite players such as Mats Sundin or Joe Sakic, they've more than earned the time to consider their future. Of course, they've also earned (to a certain extent) the intense interest in the outcome of their meditations.

I can't help but contrast the difference between the coverage Sundin has gotten with the somewhat scanty attention Sakic has received. To be sure, Sundin is the captain of a team in the centre of hockey's universe (so they'd like to believe), and had made it clear that he would consider another team. He's articulate, and much like our own captain, has often carried his team on his shoulders when no one else was wiilling to do it. Too, this is a man who is weighing how to best have a shot at the Cup he hasn't yet won against his desires to (I suppose) stay right where he is, and dunno, eat sushi.

Sakic, on the other hand, has very little left to prove. He has won the Cup multiple times, has enjoyed success in international play in whatever tournament he's chosen to participate in, has seen his franchise go from struggling in Quebec into the Western powerhouse of the late 90s. Most importantly, in a role and city befitting his quiet, nonflashy nature, he's risen to the pinnacle of hockey success quietly, without the dazzle of playing in a Canadian or in the big lights of the Eastern Seaboard.

Perhaps that's what's the most telling about the Sundin drama. Unlike other fence-sitters, like Sakic, Selanne or Niedermayer, there is definitely the sense of unfinished business.

That said... I think I'd rather be watching fencing now than worrying about where he's going.

The Open Ice Hits Olympics: Swimming

Ahhh....! You thought these were going to be in alphabetical order, or something, right? Nope, it's just whatever sport I think I can use to frame some broad generalizations about whatever's floating through my head...

Dave and I have had several discussions over the summer, about the Flames, and swimming, and the big sea of mediocrity which we are now cannonballing into (they don't do cannonballs during the Olympics? I knew something about them was bogus).

I don't think the Flames will be contenders this year. Not serious ones. We won't sink to the bottom of the conference or the division, but we won't be great either. Basically, we'll be in the same position that we've all been in denial about for oh, the last two seasons now. Good enough to make the playoffs; not quite good enough to go deep.

I look at the moves we've made over the summer, and for the most part, they've been intelligent, rational moves. They are not, however, moves that inspire any particular excitement. They're moves designed to keep us where we are; but not moves designed to move us forward.

But you might wonder, didn't we have the same kind of lineup when we did go deep? I have the sense that Sutter believes he has a template from that year, and that if only he can find all the right spare parts, we'll get that magic team again. But the guys he's spent the last four years building around aren't getting any younger - there's no guarantee that even if he can assemble the correct elements, that the core will still work the way he expects it to.

So I hope we have our new hi-tech uniforms on... I'm all ready to go swimming in the sea of mediocrity... who's with me?

Um.

Anyone?

Vacation Reading

I was not-so-recently (sorry about that) given a review copy of Cold-Cocked: On Hockey, a recent book written by Lorna Jackson, a writer living on Vancouver Island, and yes, a Canucks fan.

I'm not interested in writing as an alien, a stunned onlooker, a girlie fan in a baggy jersey, or a robot guided by the television camera's morbid fixation on the puck.

The 2003-04 season was a watershed year for the Calgary Flames and their fans. In Vancouver, it was a watershed year for the Canucks, with names like Bertuzzi and Moore forever entangled in that season. And it was a watershed year for the author of this book as well. It would be a difficult year, with stresses in both her personal and professional lives that change her indelibly. She would commute from Vancouver Island to Vancouver regularly, to catch games and try to interview as many players and members of the Canucks organization as she could. Despite the many frustrations she would encounter, she would tough it out somehow, using what she observed on the ice and in the dressing room as inspiration.

Most hockey books I've encountered in the past have been bathed in fond nostalgia, or drowned in journalistic impersonality. Not so, this book. Ms. Jackson writes passionately, about her life, her past, her surroundings, as they all intersect with hockey. She's fearless and relentless in exposing every facet of her life as she spends the year asking questions about the game, and subjecting her answers to deep feminist analysis.

However, the same energy which so distinguishes this book from others also points out its greatest flaws. While there's no doubt that Ms. Jackson can write vividly, and likewise, there's no questioning the amount of sweat and tears that went into the writing, it's not at all clear to me why she wrote it.

It's obvious that this was a big year for her, full of changes and pain and joy, but it's unclear what drove her to begin chronicling it, what drove her to attend as many Canucks games as she did, what drove her to acquire dressing room credentials for the year. It's fortuitious that she got as much exposure to the Vancouver Canucks during this year that she could use as material to base her musings about her life.

Whatever Ms. Jackson's original intentions were, the book changes tone early on, to become a book about writing the book. However, the lack of explanation of what inspired this project in the first place makes the result come off as a vanity piece. It becomes more narcissistic than reflective. Which is unfortunate, for a writer who is so skilled and passionate about what she loves.

Maybe I'm being harsh. My impressions certainly weren't helped by encountering frequent and reoccuring typos of names I dearly love, names of players from my own team, like Nieuwendyk (OK, maybe we can let that one go), and McLennan. These only helped to reinforce my vague sense that Ms. Jackson's world was constrained that season, by the Canucks and nothing but, not even other teams nearby.

So my final verdict? Read this book if you want to dissect the life of a Canucks fan, if you want to see what makes this specific woman tick. Don't read it expecting to derive any new revelations of the game, to generalize her experience to what we all feel when the puck hits the ice.

Other HLOGgers chime in:
Sherry at Scarlett Ice
Cat at Untypical Girls

And maybe now everybody will spell it "Brenden"

Well played last night, Dallas Stars, well played. Well worth staying up for.

Thank you for avenging our golfers.

Pack your bags!

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.

Happy Belated Everything!

So this time last year (thereabouts), a bunch of blogs were born.

Happy first anniversary to all our other co-Flames bloggers out there. It's been a crazy year, and I'm (and I assume Dave is too) delighted to have met many of you on occasion.

How crazy a year has it been? Let me present to you our year in fabulous, hilarious greatest hits, Open Ice Hits style:

Dear Road Flames
Liveblog vs Dallas: the Kill me Now edition
Dave's not-quite excellent adventure in Detroit
Oh, Captain, our Captain
All hail Nilson!

(And yes, I know the end of the month has passed. I'm not kidding about the belated-everything of the post title. Fantasy standings up shortly. Really. Just let me climb on top again.)

So tonight we're playing the Oilers in what will be a momentous (I'm hoping not) first start for Curtis Joseph, the ex-Coyote, ex-Leaf, ex-Oiler, ex-ex midseason signing we made. It'll be a momentous start also for the Oilers' newly acquired Curtis Glencross, who tanned our asses last time the Jackets were in town (alas, I had front row seats to the tanning, and thus actually didn't get a good look at anything).

Should be a good game for us, not so good a game for our surly hosts. 5-1. Iggy with the half-Nilson hat trick.

Anyone have a toddler and a box of crayons?

Flames not playing games watch: We're about halfway through our eight day break. Just DYING of boredom here (if not for things like school and work and getting on with our actual lives, such as the all-weekend Lost marathon, and watching foreign movies only two other people have heard of...)

So we did some looking about the intarweb, and have come up with some things by which you can entertain yourself. But! Don't forget the AllStar game!



(Now that we've pimped the game for Versus, our mugs are in the mail, right? Right?)

What else can we do? There's video fun, from MG and the ole CBC.

And speaking of video fun, and the CBC, if you haven't amused yourself enough, check out this handy dandy time-waster. I've never been so glad somebody has used my tax dollars to harness the power of Web 2.0. See?

Wednesday cannot come soon enough.

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.

I'll make this quick

So, just WHO, in all their marketing wisdom, in the Calgary Flames organization thought it would be a good idea to put a PPV game on Grey Cup Sunday?

Just wondering.

Game has started (both of 'em)... off I go.

Deep thoughts for another day.

Happy days....?

While I completely missed the early session today at training camp (um, overslept), I was able to make the second session, which consisted of our vets. While they were all in practice jerseys which severely limited my ability to figure out who was doing what (er... Dion has a big green stick. Iggy is darker than everyone else. Kipper... oh, you get the idea...), it was an interesting session nonetheless.

As far as I could tell, this was the first practice for the team under the regime of Keenan. Given that it was public, and his first time skating with the team, of course there wasn't anything dramatic happening. And as far as practices go, it was pretty lighthearted. While you could see Preston or Keenan barking at the guys to work a bit harder or to keep their legs moving from time to time, overall, the tone of the practice wasn't too serious...exactly as you'd expect for the first one of the year.

(What would I call lighthearted? How about - my dad identified him as Tanguay, but what the hell do we know? - beating Kipper then riding his stick while getting some one-on-one drills done? It made everybody - on the ice and in the stands laugh...)

I didn't see a lot of summer rust on any of the guys. As soon as I found a seat I could tell the difference between this and the intrasquad game the other day - today, these guys are pros. The tempo was a lot faster and overall much more intense, though in the scrimmages there was less mushing and crushing along the boards.

All in all, I'm getting more and more psyched for the regular season. Not sure how my schedule next week will jibe with seeing more practices, but I do have tickets for a couple of pre-season games, and I can't hardly wait...

The Dog Days of Summer

Ick, it's that part of summer which makes it feel like hockey will never come back.

So here's a couple of items which have caught my attention lately:

• WI's posts about the prospects camp.
• A couple of re-signings, here and there. Are you celebrating, WI? Are you???
• Chris Clark's contract renewal. One of the ex-Flames out there who I find it impossible to hate on. Good on him for his awesome Ovechkin-juiced year.
• Andrew Ference's summer vacation: Another ex-Flame I find impossible to hate. Less for his on-ice play, but more and more for the man he is off the ice.

(Don't any current members of the Flames roster do anything interesting?)

I don't really have anything deep to say - at this point the offseason seems a long, long ways off.

Oh. Keep an eye on Duncan's fantastic series about the competition. Some good stuff there.

Where are they now?

On a completely different note (I need a breather from all that free agent action), for those of you who've wondered "Where are they now?" ... well... I have a partial answer (courtesy of Kukla's Korner):

Tanzania. Seriously.

A couple of ex-Flames doing some terrific work. Kudos to them.

Pre-draft thoughts

Update, 4-something PM: Seems like we've thrown in Steve Marr into the deal as well. Not particularly high on the depth charts back on the farm, and it frees up an additional spot on the defence there, which might point to what we'll be looking to draft over the weekend. Essentially, it's just one big meh.

Update, 11-something AM: Scratch any negative thoughts about that trade. Aucoin for Zyuzin. Boo-YEAH! I was a bit wary of having to spend another draft pick (of which we have few) to get Aucoin, and this gets rid of our problem child.

I meant to get this out earlier, but such is life...

By now, people are expecting Darryl Sutter to pull another "Alex FREAKING Tanguay" style move. Out of the blue, completely unexpected, and something which will challenge the team's critics to think again.

Adrian Aucoin wasn't it. Aucoin is a predictable acquisition, which doesn't particularly excite nor worry me. There's the connection to Keenan/Sutter. There's the veteran presence. They're probably hoping he'll contribute some form of leadership to the dressing room, to help address the issues with discipline the team had last year.

Most importantly, this signals to me that management expects Hamrlik to be gone. Like Hamrlik, and Marchment before him, they will expect Aucoin to mentor Dion Phaneuf and the other young blueliners in the organization. There were concerns towards the end of last season that Phaneuf's development was starting to stall - you only had to look at guys like Weber, Seabrook and Barker to see other young d-men starting to make bigger splashes than our Dion.

Once we know for certain what the Flames gave up in return for Aucoin, I'll be able to deliver a verdict on the trade. Right now, given that Aucoin is a touch cheaper than any price Hamrlik or Stuart would demand, I understand he's the kind of guy we'll have to settle for.

What? It's not Bryan McCabe for more than $7M a year. It could be worse, ok?

The other rumour which seems to be persistently floating around out there is Montreal's Kovalev for Tanguay. My reaction is generally no effin' way. While Tanguay has at times seemed to be an awkward fit for the Calgary Flames, he had an astoundingly productive year and showed decent (not great) chemistry with most of the guys he played with in the top two lines. Kovalev? I'm not certain Sutter, especially with Keenan on board now, has the patience for another Huselius-style reclamation project.

Now! On to the fun stuff. Today is draft day, of course, or at least the day they'll get the first couple of rounds done.

The pantry seems to be pretty well-stocked in terms of goalies (any theories as to why Krahn was re-signed?) and forwards - I'd expect some stolid, strapping young d-men to be added to the larder for the most part.

I'm not expecting us to unearth a wunderkind or a diamond in the rough. We don't have the picks this year for that. I would expect Sutter to go for a guy who already has connections to the league. Brandon Sutter (Gotta collect them all, though I don't think he'll last that long in the first round) is an obvious one, as is Maxime Tanguay, and Colton Gillies. Given that the logistics of getting Taraktukhin to North America were a bit of a gong show last year, I'd expect him to take a flier on any Russians (and I'd expect this to be the general trend for all teams).

Considering the scarcity of Calgary Flames draft picks this draft, I also won't be surprised to find Sutter moving young, relatively cheap bodies (Moss is one I identified, Hale or Giordano could potentially be others) to get a pick or two in the second or third rounds.

Hold on to your hats, kids - I expect this to be a fun day.

Hi. Hello. Anybody listening?

Testing, testing, 1, 2...

Just want to confirm with all you other kids.

What: Game 3, or, "Will Ottawa respond better to some homecooking and ice that actually might be frozen?"
Where: The Wheat Sheaf
When: Tomorrow (Saturday, June 2... argh! June) Game starts at 8 - I suggest meeting there a touch early so we can find each other.

Dave is still my imaginary friend (sucker!). Anybody Calgary-based who'd also like an empty seat to be there in spirit, let me know...if you want to bring somebody random who has no connection to the Flames blogosphere, the more the merrier.

See everybody out there!