The Flames are in Ell-Ehh! tonight to take on the Kings at 830PM MT. The game is on Flames Pay-Per-View, and wonder of wonders, I'll be watching it. Mrs. Matt did indeed call to crack some skulls the day after the last abomination.

Apparently the "Customer Service" lady I talked to the night of the game was any or all of grumpy, poorly directed, and not-bright: when Mrs. Matt talked to StarChoice the next day, we got the price of the PPV refunded, and the next one (tonight!) free, plus the two free PPV movies (not recommended: American Dreamz).

The combination of the tardy post and the late game puts me in an interesting spot here. There's games that are over already...

• What's the old saying? You can't stop Marco Sturm, you can only hope to contain him (turns out that the one thing that isn't different for the Sens this autumn compared to last is getting pwned by the Bruins).
• Speaking of hat tricks, Mr. Gary Roberts, ladies and gentlemen. 22 years since he was drafted, 10 years since he had his neck welded back together.
• Oilers off to the early 2-0 lead. Damn, and I was looking forward to titling my next post "*Calgary". What's this? Ah, now it's 3-2 after one. 9-6 final?

Lowetide actually summed up last night's game pretty well. The Ducks had the slight edge in play through 40, but the tie score was probably fair. By all rights though, it should have been 3-3, not 1-1. Despite the craptastic ice, the Flames probably created more tic-tac-toe and one-timer scoring chances vs. Niederpronger than in any other game this year -- but Giguere was right on top of it almost every time. Iginla is playing damn well -- he was hitting and getting hit last night. Kipper let in his worst goal in 20 games, but was otherwise excellent.

And call it Lowetide Karma, but the Flames called up Dustin Boyd and David Moss from Omaha and they're playing tonight. Friesen is apparently out with a Wrist Injury (write your own joke!); unfortunately the other guy out is Tanguay with some kind of Charlie.

The bad news is that our 2nd-best forward is out. The good news is that our worst forward is out (Flames record with Friesen out of the lineup: 4-0-0), and the two guys who are drawing in have something to bring to the table that he does not. If they can demonstrate that tonight, it could be a milestone towards improving this team.

If they can stay out of the penalty box, I'm looking at a 3-0 win (Phaneuf, Iginla, Boyd; Noodles gets the shutout for his 1st win of the year). Go Flames.