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.

Kiprusoff is here to stay

I just came home to some amazing news. Sutter has managed to lock Kiprusoff up for 6 years at a cap hit of $5.8M per. That's an amazing deal, I think. I was starting to get a bit worried, what with the logical meanderings of Matt, but this certainly brightens my day.

Next up is Phaneuf. Given how much the Sutter family wants his man-children, I'd say it's as good as a done deal. The question is, how much? Exciting times for Calgary.

What a solid core this is: Iginla (top forward), Regehr (top? d-man -- he'll pick up this season, don't worry), and Kiprusoff locked up for at least 5 years. It's a good time to be a Flames fan, ladies and gentlemen.

K-Lowe -- are you taking notes?

Flames: 2, McGeough + Colorado: 3

Nothing angers me more than incompetence. No one seems to be more incompetent than Mister Magoo, on a more consistent basis. I hear he's retiring after this season -- why take so long? And how can he possibly still be employed by the league?

On the game itself, it was mostly okay. I liked a lot of what I saw. Most of the time. Maybe when I'm not enraged I could write something more coherent, but for now I think I hurt my teeth by grinding too hard. Note to self: Next time McGeough refs a game, wear a mouthguard.

In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this clip of more McGeough excellence from last season:


(PS: how awesome is Aucoin? Hale continues to not-disappoint=impress.)

(PPS: I notice I already had a McGeough label. Man, how many refs have their own blog labels?)

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.

Hangover

(Or my theory about what happened last game. Somebody must've been "celebrating" Nolan's 1000th game early... )

Sooo...Minnesota tonight. Not too many expectations here - after all, Minnesota's played strong all season, and haven't lost yet. And the game's not anywhere I can watch it. We did stink to high heaven last game. I'm not sure what it was, but the Sharks had a much easier time of the Flames Monday than when I saw them play during the pre-season. And that's all I'm saying about that.

Anyways! McElhinney's out in Quad Cities, Keetley's back in town. I suspect they want to give McElhinney actual ice time which was a bit nicer than the other night so he can properly work his lower body (Note: Also a useful term when you can't remember which body part is broken).

I do expect Calgary to come back strong, even if they have not been put through the bag skate. They are professionals, after all.

Count on a low-scoring game. I expect we'll be pretty stingy for once, and Minnesota always is.

Disclaimer: I've only seen the 2nd period

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).

Post-mortem

Not bad, not bad at all.

Is it kind of funny that the kid-ridden Oilers have a Raffi and a Penner (Dustin, not Fred, sadly) on the roster?

I won't comment much on the Oilers. Sam Gagner's first NHL goal coming in an arena where he practically grew up is definitely a feel-good story. The rest of the game...not so much. The kids seemed to be doing just fine for the Oilers, but the absence of vets in general to mentor this kids has got to be hurting the team.

On our side...it was an overly expensive win, losing Primeau to a busted ankle and Moss to Raffi Torres. I may comment on that some more later. Right now I'm kind of guiltily thinking about my musings before the game that so far, Calgary's been pretty lucky injury-wise. I thought Torres' hit was questionable at best (Translation: That punkass was effin' dirty), and can only give up kudos to Nolan and Warrener who made it clear that nobody on our side liked it.

That said, I liked most of what I saw this game. Kipper made a couple of jaw-dropping saves, tough to do with as much quiet time as he had during the game. We saw Eriksson checking out the view from the press box for the first time, and Hale was definitely a marked improvement, with a strong physical presence and no glaring game-losing giveaways. With the top two pairings in particular, I love what's going on with the D this year. I like that Phaneuf is taking more chances in front of the net (and being smart enough that this isn't a defensive liability of McCabe-like proportions), and that Regehr is actually shooting at the net.

The forwards were decent too. The top two lines had another, mostly consistent game. Even Godard, who got more time thanks to the absences of Primeau and Moss, seemed to capitalize on his extra ice time (though I had to laugh as he chased down a puck to try and prevent an icing call...wouldn't that make the guy ahead of him skatefaster?)

Oh well, it's all good! Next game against San Jose.

Bring. It. On.

Er...this is a bit late, but here goes.

Basically, I'm expecting nothing but good from this game. The boys are clicking in ways we never saw in the pre-season, when they did play Edmonton, they've been winning recently, so there's no headgames the way we know they're all so prone to playing...

This isn't to belittle Edmonton, who haven't been as terrible as they could have been since the start of the season. There is light at the end of the tunnel, if all their prospects turn out to be as promising as Gagner and Cogliano have been. BUT... remember that one of those guys is also Schremp. So....not so much.

But whatever! There's a chill in the air, I've got popcorn ready to go, and I've been snickering at the Leafs' awesome ability to maintain a lead. It's Saturday night, and things are going to be just dandy.

Flames. Win. That's all I got.

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!

Pre-Game: Calgary @ Colorado

9:00pm eastern, 7:00pm mountain, the showdown begins: the Calgary Flames (2-2-1) face the Colorado Avalanche (3-2-0). My prediction is a high-scoring, high octane affair with the Flames coming out on top 6-5. Our defense has yet to really gel to be anything to be supremely confident in, Kiprusoff still looks like he's sitting just outside of "the Zone", and Colorado's defense will never gel to be that great.

But this will definitely be a game I'll watch carefully tonight. If the Flames can pick up another consecutive road win, it'll go a long way to burying the main weakness from last year and hopefully allow everyone to move on with a clear head. I was getting real tired of whining about the road woes and the evil twins. Perhaps the fact that Keenan actually has a spine will impact the rather fragile mental situation of the team last year.

Speaking of Keenan, is it too early to make any judgments? Yes, yes it is. But I do like what I see so far for the most part, and I've no major complaints yet. Maybe in a month there will be more room for criticisms and praises, but for now I'm curious to see how this all plays out.

And, forgive me for saying this, but I love Paul Stastny. He is my sugardaddy in a few of my fantasy leagues. If Colorado is to score, may that gentleman be blessed with points.

(Side note: The following photograph made my day)