Man, I feel good for the Flames players. To say they deserved that win could (I suppose) be an item for debate, but there's no damn doubt that they earned it. It's been a long time since they won in Dallas (names from that scoresheet: Marc Savard, Rob Niedermayer, Bob Boughner, Chris Clark, Toni Lydman...)

**Keenan: I feel secure enough in my mathematical/logical bona fides to say this anyway: having him instead of JP standing in the centre of the bench back there has got to be worth 3 wins this year. I'm curious to know whether it's M&Ms or Tums or what he's always throwing back, but he just generally looks like he's got his shit together and is running the show.

On that note, the highlight of the PPV broadcast tonight was the Miked Up feature listening to Keenan during one of the two Canucks games in Calgary this fall. Clip #1: him telling an unseen player that leaning against the boards while standing on the ice during a TV timeout makes him look lazy (old school, details, etc.). Clip #2: him giving someone shit for throwing his broken stick; guy protests that he didn't; brief argument; then Keenan concedes and says something like "Well, that's what it looked like". (Not imperious for its own sake; obviously willing to pick his battles; still a focus on details. And they showed the clip, and the player was telling the truth.)

**PPV: ahhh... positives first, besides the brief feature I just described: there was no transmission difficulties. There was a powerplay clock, and it was correct at all times. Roger Millions seems to be intent on ignoring the inconsistencies and just-plain-misses of the officials. And as the host, Deb Matejcka is a millionfold improvement over Mark Stiles.

Unfortunately, Charlie Simmer is... I don't even know what would be fair to say here. But he didn't say enough that I found interesting or insightful, and too many of his observations were simply ludicrous (dude, when they show the slo-mo replay, consider it a license to amend your comments). Cosh's words about ex-jocks were pretty much echoing through my head for 2.5 hours.

The other funny thing/lowlight: late in the 2nd, there was a ref's timeout so they could review a Daymond Langkow shot that might have been a goal. Every angle the PPV broadcast showed hinted at the same thing: it went through Turco and then bounced back out, off of Who Knows What -- no overhead. Anyway, the ref hangs up the phone and says no goal... fine... and the play starts again. And Roger tells us all something like, "Our apologies, but they showed the overhead cam on the Jumbotron here in the arena, and it definitely went off the post." Good times.

**Aucoin: awesome! That's what I'm talking about. His only offensive opportunity was in OT on a good move/poor redirection, and that's absolutely fine with me. The rest of the game, he was a stronger and slightly pissier Steve Staios for 24+ minutes. By the way, when I say a guy was Staios as a compliment, I'm referring to the 3 out of 4 games where Staios is a regular solid defender, not the 1 out of 4 where he loses his shit and spends a lot of time looking at the rafters while the other team hugs and high-fives.

**The 4th Line: I'm still down on the "veteran depth", but it really does make a huge difference when Godard isn't in the lineup. Wayne Primeau is a legitimate NHLer, but not one who is capable of dragging someone else along with him. Also, if there's one surprising thing from the TOI numbers tonight, it's Yelle's down at 10:37 (though I see he had as many shifts in the 3rd as in the first two periods combined... also, nice feed up to Lombardi for the GTG, I told you that was a good combo!).

Tomorrow night is Nashville, no TV. I said mixed results this weekend in my season preview; hope I'm wrong. Either way, I'm still entranced by that Colorado game.

Go Flames.