Flames Game Day

**It's not quite the stretch, but you can see it from here: the push for playoffs and seeding starts in earnest tonight for the Flames when they host San Jose (730PM MT, TSN). Objective #1: qualify for the playoffs. Objective #1A: win the NW and put off a collision with the Wings until the WC Finals.

It would appear that, with the return of Selanne, the Ducks are now looked upon as co-favourites (if not outright favourites) in the West. Since the Ducks have played 19 games with Scott Niedermayer, here, for fun, are the records of some of the WC hopefuls in their past 19:

• ANA: 12-5-2, 26pts
• SJS: 11-5-3, 25pts
• MIN: 11-7-1, 23pts
• DAL: 10-8-1, 21pts
• VAN: 9-8-2, 20pts
• COL: 9-7-3, 21pts
• NSH: 11-5-3, 25pts
• CBJ: 11-8-0, 22pts
• PHX: 12-5-2, 26pts
• CGY: 12-4-3, 27pts
• and oh yeah, DET: 14-4-1, 29pts

**Metrognome's pre-game today talks about

what seems to be holding the Flames back from being a consistently excellent club is their special teams both of which are worse than ordinary.

The PK is actually decent now, it's just that it was so awful early on that the season numbers are still polluted (26 PPGA in the first 20 games, 19 PPGA in the last 30). The PP though, as he notes, is a bit of a puzzle:

...the PP has been steadily falling in efficiency for awhile now (Iginla's slump has really hurt in this regard) and is also down in the bottom 3rd of the league (16.7%, 20th). The latter fact is a headscratcher given that the Flames have scored the 8th most ES goals in the NHL (95). Intuitively, a team that can score 5on5 should be able to score 5on4, but that hasn't happened for Keenan's Flames this year. I don't know if it has to do with personnel (is there a worse 2nd PP unit in the entire league?), coaching (it's said that Keenan almost never practices the PP) or luck (Dion Phaneuf's shooting percentage is down more than 4% relative to his career average - that translates to more than 6 lost goals over the 163 shots he's taken already).

It's quite possible that all of the above are factors, but the key explanation for what is happening (as distinct from why) is indeed the #2 unit. Like tPSH today, I was wondering last week what makes a successful PP, and thought I'd test one Flames-inspired hypothesis: that it's the #2 units that make the difference between the above-average (~20%) PP and the mediocre-to-poor (~15%) PP.

Conclusion: hypothesis not supported by the evidence. Using the Behind the Net figures (5-on-4 only), I looked at the top 3 PPs (PHI, MTL, DET) and CGY/VAN/CHI who were tied for 19th at 17.0%; sorted their top 6 PP forwards by PP ice time, and then compared PP scoring while the 1-2-3 fwds were on the ice (avg of the 3) to the 4-5-6 fwds.

Now, you don't want to make too much of this -- obviously there's overlap between the 1st and 2nd units at times, coaches blend personnel fairly often, etc. etc... But at the same time, it's quite impossible to deny that the Flames' PP% is dragged down in a big way by the #2 unit.

Or put another way: Iginla and Nolan are ~ never on at the same time. Iginla has about 2.3X the PP time this season as Nolan. While Iginla is on the ice, the Flames have scored 29 PP goals. While Nolan is on the ice, they've scored 2.

Why? The biggest reason is (duh) that Owen Nolan is not as good as Jarome Iginla. But some of it is probably luck; some is probably that Phaneuf is better on the PP point than Regehr (or any of the other options); some is that Tanguay is (relatively speaking) not near as good a PP performer as a 5v5 performer; some may be coaching, moon phases, who knows.

**I did catch some of the Sharks/Oil game last night... here's hoping it lulled the Sharks, however briefly, into thinking that hockey is an easy game.

Calgary 4 (Iginla x2, Moss, Nolan)
San Jose 2 (Cheechoo, Mitchell)

Go Flames.