Saturday, January 21, 2006
Flames Game Night
Chris Drury and the Buffalo Sabres are in Calgary tonight. Drury got a bit of bad rap in Calgary; he was widely thought to be very unhappy here, but from the accounts of people who'd be inclined to confirm such a thing, it was simply that he's just not much of a smiler.However, that in no way mitigates the fact that he was pretty damn disappointing. When the Flames acquired him from Colorado for Derek Morris, most of us were expecting him to increase his production, being an unquestioned first-line #1-PP-unit guy. He responded with a 23-30-53, -9.
In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that it was the expectations that were out of whack, not his performance. He's a 25-goal guy, and his sublime knack for scoring big goals with Colorado was more a function of his fine team than a special "clutch" gene.
He's getting quite a bit of gloss for the Sabres performance this year. He's an awesome faceoff guy, although his +/- rating of -8 on the season is none too impressive. Perhaps he's become more of an active, vocal leader; I don't know--I'm just glad he's contributing whatever it is he's contributing somewhere else. (Fun, eyebrow-raising fact: he wears the number 23 as a tribute to the pennant-less Don Mattingly.)
The Canucks beat Buffalo on Thursday by sawing-off on PP goals, beating them at even strength, and getting pretty good goaltending. That sounds to me like a formula that Calgary can execute. 4-2 for the good guys. Go Flames.
# posted by Matt @ 3:36 pm 
Comments:
I always got the impression that Chris Drury was a dry currish, but maybe thats not his leadership style.
OK, watching the one replay I saw of the disputed goal it definitely looked like he kicked it towards the net, but he also swung his stick at it. From the angle I saw I did not know if the stick knocked it the last few inches into the net. I'm sure the net cam would have cleared this up, was it even reviewed?
If the final had been 2-1, or 3-1 with an empty netter then this would have been a huge deal, but as it was there was lots of time left for Buffalo to recover, and they didn't get another goal even though we know how the Flames are with 2 goal leads.
So I guess that's it for the east. 6-2-1 vs the East, 4-0-0 vs the vaunted NE division. It's to the road now.
Post a Comment
<< Home
I always got the impression that Chris Drury was a dry currish, but maybe thats not his leadership style.
OK, watching the one replay I saw of the disputed goal it definitely looked like he kicked it towards the net, but he also swung his stick at it. From the angle I saw I did not know if the stick knocked it the last few inches into the net. I'm sure the net cam would have cleared this up, was it even reviewed?
If the final had been 2-1, or 3-1 with an empty netter then this would have been a huge deal, but as it was there was lots of time left for Buffalo to recover, and they didn't get another goal even though we know how the Flames are with 2 goal leads.
So I guess that's it for the east. 6-2-1 vs the East, 4-0-0 vs the vaunted NE division. It's to the road now.
# posted by 
: January 22, 2006 10:44 pm
: January 22, 2006 10:44 pm Post a Comment
<< Home
