The Flames finish their 4-game roadie through the NE Division tonight against Boston (5PM MDT, Flames PPV). The Bruins are T-29th in the Overall Standings right now. That's bad, and I don't expect them to be a good team, but their 3 points in 5 games were all on the road; tonight is the B's home opener. New Bruin Zdeno Chara (pictured at left) is leading the team in scoring with 5 points, all assists.

I've been messing around with a few numbers, and I'm going to take back some of my post-game comments from Tuesday. I stand by what I said about the coach: he needs to, I think, sound like he's been there before better, and I assume that will come. Projecting calm is only laudable if you're also projecting confidence. I also think he still talks to the media too much like an AC (overly technical) and uses too much MBA-sounding, jiko-konri bullshit jargon (e.g. the players "investing" in this and that).

But looking more at the numbers, I'm just as confident as I was last (gruesome) October that the Flames and their record will come around.

At EV, the Flames have 9GF and 7GA. This is a goal differential of about +0.5EVGD/60. That ain't bad, especially with 4/6 on the road; projected through a whole season that's roughly a +28 ES GD, which puts them firmly in the upper tier of the league, provided that special teams and shootouts are anywhere near a wash. Which brings me to:

The Flames' special teams have been laughably bad so far. You knew that already, but they have been, statistically speaking, not only improbably bad but unsustainably bad.

Start with the PK: they have 1 SH GF and 9 PP GA. Based on time spent on the PK so far, that's a PK GD of -8.07/60. Halfway through last season (last time I did detailed calculations), the league average was -6.03/60, and the worst team in the league was Atlanta at -7.64/60 -- that's Atlanta, who at that point had started 5 goalies including Adam Berkhoel and Steve Shields. There is zero chance that Calgary will maintain a spot at the bottom of the PK rankings for the whole season; the worst case scenario is probably the middle. In short: the Flames are somewhere between 1 and 3 goals worse on the PK this year than you would expect based on full-season rates.

The PK, however, is minor lousiness compared to the PP. In 66:24 of PP time so far this year, the Flames have 3 PP GF and 2 SH GA. That's a PP GD of +0.90/60. Once again, halfway through last season, the PP team had a GD of +6.03/60 against the PK team. To quote a relatively well known stats guy on the internet,

I think it's safe to say that things are going to get significantly better on the PP and there's no point getting concerned about it at the moment - PP's aren't this bad, period.

It's certainly possible that the Flames will have a below average PP. It's hard to project these things based just on the lineup card (last mid-season, the worst PPGD in the league belonged to the Lightning at +4.07/60; they surged and finished 23rd in the NHL in PP%). But based just on a poor full-season rate, the Flames should be at least 4 goals better on the PP so far this season.

These early-season struggles on special teams could be based on a lot of factors, but there's really no way that the most important one has been anything but Luck.

Tonight, Calgary will be playing the role of Bob Barker, reflected on the scoresheet as a 3-1 Win. Go Flames.