Friday, September 21, 2007

 

Flames REview: What the heck happened, anyway?

At left: Flames 2006/07 season in a box.

I think we knew that after the rotten start, the Flames were excellent in November and December. What wasn't near as clear to me, until putting this table together, is just how much they were treading water from mid-January on.

But WHYYYYYYY???

Hey, wish I knew. The usual sportswriter procedure here is to look for an event that might have been a tipping point (an injury, an acquisition or departure, an off-ice controversy, what have you). I'm a bit leery of this, because there's a lot of possible events, and it's extremely difficult to distinguish the effects of one from another: forget about causation, it's even tough to establish correlation. But here's a bit of a January/February timeline:
Don't know about you, but nothing really sticks out sore-thumb-style here. The one thing I can identify that I expressed concern about at the time was (mostly) separating Iginla and Langkow after Conroy came in: Iginla's EVP/60 dropped from 3.89 after 40 games to 2.62 in the 2nd half (still a superb number, but that's a big drop); Langkow's split was 2.96/2.10.

There's no obvious clues here either; all this table really shows is that the Flames were a very outstanding EV team for the 32-game stretch where they made their season, enough for a 21-8-3 record despite poor special teams.

Did Kipper start playing worse halfway through the season? Did the mentality of a bunch of players change, and the coach couldn't do anything about it? Were they tired? Was there a lot of luck involved with their good stretch? Did Sutter cock up a perfectly sound roster by bringing in Conroy and Stuart (and shipping out Ference)? I wish I had better answers.

Comments:

Losing Charles "In Charge" Kobasew clearly screwed the Flames more than anyone is willing to let on.
 


over at fever4flames i've posted a review of coilers devastating loss last night (the first of many many more to come) and my prediction for the batlle of alberta! check it out and leave your predictions in the comments
 


Lombo stepped into quicksand when Conroy came back too...

The Conroy trade wasn't bad per se...it was the method in which he was employed when he got here that screwed things up I think.
 


Maybe it is just the fact that the FLAMES ARE OVER-RATED!!!!
 


Fever4falmes....try to leave links to credible blog sites not ones where the site name is Falmes and all the blogs are about Oilers.
 


I really liked Ference. Still think it was a bad trade, in that Stuart didn't do a whole heck of a lot for the Flames, and I always thought Ference was underrated and received too much flak from fans.

As for fever4flames...how pathetic and sad does he and his blog have to be that he has resorted to posting at least 2-3 times on the comment sections of other people's blogs just to try to get some attention for himself?

I mean at least when someone posts for a porn site you know it's at least to try to make money, F4F is just doing it for attention.
 


The best thing about fever4falmes is...he is one of yours femme boys. hahahahaha......one to count your own. Someone you know who proudly bears the falming C. lmao.
 


Man, "Oilnator" is giving you guys what for.
 


I didn't see much of the Flames this past season, especially not after Christmas. Still, a trivial matter such as this won't stop me from pontificating on the subject.

I remember that at the time the Oilers were in first place in the division in December, they had been blessed by the goalpost gods while CGY, MIN and VAN were being pissed on by the same.

At a quick glance it looks like the Flames had a burst of luck with the posts in the third quarter of the season, maybe that glossed over the impact of Iginla's absence and time of adjustment when he returned. Again, just spitballing.

When Iginla comes back it probably took him a while to get back to speed. He surely wasn't fully fit either. Then in the last quarter or so of the season it appears that they started ringing way more than their share of iron again, and weren't getting enough help from their pipes at their own end.

You've obviously got the games split up, if you're interested the goalpost stuff is here. The second column is the NHL game number. The last column is the opposing team.

Hey, you wanted theories. :D
 


"femme boys"?

sheesh.
 


Man, "Oilnator" is giving you guys what for.

I actually think it's "f4f", arguing with himself (herself?).
 


i do NOT engage in sock puppetry!

the oilinator is just another Coilhead loudmouth.

5-2 flames tonight.
 


hey fever4flames...who won tonight??

bet he doesn't even show....
 

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