Tuesday, November 14, 2006

 

Flames Game Day

The Flames host the Blues tonight (730PM MST, RSN West). First some miscellany:

**I caught about the last 10 minutes of the Oilers game last night, and wish I had been holding a pen, but a few notes from memory:
**"The 1927 Yankees don't have this degree of representation in the Baseball Hall of Fame..." -- Colby Cosh has the final word on Dick Duff's induction into the HHOF

** Tyler and Tom have both noted a funny (i.e. crying on the inside) quote from Bill Daly, in response to the Forbes story on increased franchise values: "That's not unexpected. That's what the CBA was intended to accomplish." They're both pretty hard on the media too, and fairly, I'd say.

That said, I'm a forgive-and-forget kind of guy. I'd be happy to give everyone a pass on the crappy, way-too-credulous lockout coverage, if only they'd start thinking more critically now. When the lockout ended, I had 3 questions for hockey writers. Briefly:
  1. How do you plan on judging whether the new NHL CBA is an improvement over the old one? Is there at least one objective standard that should be met?
  2. The owners won and the players lost. If the new CBA is not an improvement, is it the owners fault?
  3. And if so, what level of skepticism would it be appropriate to cast on the owners' proposed solution next time?
Happy Christmas, the war is over, but I'd sure be gratified if the people who might have some influence over the next one learned anything from last time.

**Oh yeah, Game Night! Unlike our Western Canadian competitors, the Flames have gotten the job done against the Blues since the lost year. They got Stempniaked (man, that comment thread is funny in retrospect) in the shootout the first game last season, but won the last three, plus the first this season.

The Blues have been pretty much as expected so far this season: better, but not playoffs better. A Flames win tonight is important. If LT can use baseball jargon, I suppose I can use golf...

The Oil's win last night was like birdieing 18 at the end of a weak round; the scorecard (2-2-1 road trip) doesn't really look that bad. A Flames loss tonight would be like finishing a real good round by double-bogeying the par-5 18th: a lot of the progress against par made through a tougher stretch of holes is somewhat nullified by making a 7 when it ought to have been a 4 or a tap-in 5.

Calgary's malodorous special teams (both 26th-ranked) have got to get it together one of these nights. I'm gonna call a 5-1 win, with 3 PP GF, 0 PP GA, and a hat trick for Mr. Alex Tanguay. Go Flames.

Comments:

I agree with everything you said about Horcoff's play last night (the high circle PP slapshot particularily stands out) but I would still take him over Langkow. Horcoff can play the PK and actually wins faceoffs. Plus, like you say, Horcoff is in a slump, while I think Daymond is just being Daymond.
 


I did not understand the love for Rollie's save on Hejduk last night either. Imagine if it had squeaked in (and it darn near did) -- letting in the tying goal from that angle would have been goat city. He made a routine save look difficult by almost flubbing it.

Anyway, the Flames will show the Oilers what you do with a team like St Louis -- you beat them black and blue (bwa).

Go Flames.
 


Lombardi seems to be playing this year the way Horcoff played last year.
 


yeah they did get a little over excited about the save... but here is the reason that Petersen was on the ice late...

"I don't know if there's anybody I feel more comfortable with having the puck in open ice than Toby right now. You just know he's going to make the right play. His decision-making has been impeccable."
- Oilers head coach Craig MacTavish on the strong play of Toby Petersen since being recalled from Iowa.


Also, I just read this on ESPN's power rankings for the week...

Fans were rallying to raise $10,000 to give back to coach Craig MacTavish for a recent league fine. How about that one victory in the past six games? Can you raise money for that? Or raise Jussi Markkanen from the dead?

...ouch

Hope Smytty is back in the lineup ASAP
 


I don't have a clue why Liles wouldn't be suspended — but he's not going to be.

Granted, it's not a standard Domi-elbow-to-the-face suspension type move, but it was dangerous as hell — and that should be the main criteria for suspending players anyway.
 


For the Liles hit, it looked to me like he was taking a split stance to throw a hip check, and Smytty was just far faster than he anticipated, and thus the knee on knee. Then again, he could've just done a potentially career ending move on purpose.


As for the Flames game, always good to see Kipper putting up great numbers, especially for my fantasy team. Which been, to this point, really lacking in the goaltender statistics.
 


**yawn** another Flames win ... what is that now? FIVE in a row? Surely a standard the other half of the BoA will never achieve this season.

My team has quietly slipped into a playoff spot and sits but one point behind (and an 11 round shootout away from being even) the cursed Oil with a game in hand. Should be a good game next week.

And for those numerologically minded readers of this site, the Flames GPG is 2.70, which is not meaningfully different than the GPG of the Vaunt (a mere 2.72). Yes, the Oil's offence is positively Flame-ish.

Go Flames.
 

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