Thursday, February 05, 2009
Flames Game Day
Hawks @ Flames, 730PM MT, TSN
**The lads are coming off a couple of disappointing results, and now face a somewhat sub-optimal situation for getting back in the Win column. Chicago was struggling a bit before the break, but have come out of it with three impressive wins in four road games.
The Flames were not awful but not great in their road B2B. The Avs game was a bit of a strange one. A lot of the Flames' forwards were terrific (Lombardi, most notably, held/retrieved/distributed the puck like a guy who deserved to be the 1-line centre), but it just didn't quite translate. A few bad plays here and there did them in. Including, unfortunately, Phaneuf on the Svatos winner. I've defended Phaneuf in various venues this season -- I still think his goal scoring is likely to spike, for example, and he's as good as he's ever been at keeping the puck going in the right direction -- but that was just a really disappointing play. He's a fast, fit, strong guy in his 4th season, and there's just no damn way he should be outskated, or outmuscled, or outpositioned by the likes of Marek Svatos on a 2-on-2.
The Stars game was fairly even -- Dallas probably had a slight edge in quality of chances -- but the bounces just weren't there. Kipper played a terrific game I thought, but by the standards of Rob Kerr, Dean Molberg, Darren Dreger, Peter Loubardias, and more -- the guys who believe #34 is the MVP, because Wins are all that really matters -- it was the proverbial EPIC FAIL, right? The Stars ran a pretty tight ship with the lead, but the Flames did a decent job of creating a few opportunities up until The Five Dollar Shake potted an insurance goal.
**Spoiler for tomorrow's post: baseball-wise, the 5th-seed Stars are the same distance back of 4th -- 4-1/2 games -- as they are ahead of 15th. The Blues, who take on the Struggling OilersTM at home tonight, still have a 14% chance of making the playoffs, which is remarkably short odds for a last-place team through ~60% of the schedule.
**A Puck Daddy post on shootout stats the other day reminded me of something I glanced at way back in January 2007. Here are the combined records of the Home team in the shootout for every season since it began:
Given that, I think there's at least enough there to surmise that the logic underlying the choice to shoot first is faulty. It might not be wrong outright, but it sure looks to be meaningless at best.
**The expert consensus on tonight's game is a 3-2 Flames win. In an extremely rare move, I'm going to go against the grain, and say that the Flames are going to get crushed. Not "debacle of monumental proportions" crushed, but, you know, soundly beaten. I think they're due for some drama.
Nevertheless: Go Flames.
**The lads are coming off a couple of disappointing results, and now face a somewhat sub-optimal situation for getting back in the Win column. Chicago was struggling a bit before the break, but have come out of it with three impressive wins in four road games.
The Flames were not awful but not great in their road B2B. The Avs game was a bit of a strange one. A lot of the Flames' forwards were terrific (Lombardi, most notably, held/retrieved/distributed the puck like a guy who deserved to be the 1-line centre), but it just didn't quite translate. A few bad plays here and there did them in. Including, unfortunately, Phaneuf on the Svatos winner. I've defended Phaneuf in various venues this season -- I still think his goal scoring is likely to spike, for example, and he's as good as he's ever been at keeping the puck going in the right direction -- but that was just a really disappointing play. He's a fast, fit, strong guy in his 4th season, and there's just no damn way he should be outskated, or outmuscled, or outpositioned by the likes of Marek Svatos on a 2-on-2.
The Stars game was fairly even -- Dallas probably had a slight edge in quality of chances -- but the bounces just weren't there. Kipper played a terrific game I thought, but by the standards of Rob Kerr, Dean Molberg, Darren Dreger, Peter Loubardias, and more -- the guys who believe #34 is the MVP, because Wins are all that really matters -- it was the proverbial EPIC FAIL, right? The Stars ran a pretty tight ship with the lead, but the Flames did a decent job of creating a few opportunities up until The Five Dollar Shake potted an insurance goal.
**Spoiler for tomorrow's post: baseball-wise, the 5th-seed Stars are the same distance back of 4th -- 4-1/2 games -- as they are ahead of 15th. The Blues, who take on the Struggling OilersTM at home tonight, still have a 14% chance of making the playoffs, which is remarkably short odds for a last-place team through ~60% of the schedule.
**A Puck Daddy post on shootout stats the other day reminded me of something I glanced at way back in January 2007. Here are the combined records of the Home team in the shootout for every season since it began:
- 2008/09: 46-48
- 2007/08: 77-79
- 2006/07: 79-85
- 2005/06: 75-70
Given that, I think there's at least enough there to surmise that the logic underlying the choice to shoot first is faulty. It might not be wrong outright, but it sure looks to be meaningless at best.
**The expert consensus on tonight's game is a 3-2 Flames win. In an extremely rare move, I'm going to go against the grain, and say that the Flames are going to get crushed. Not "debacle of monumental proportions" crushed, but, you know, soundly beaten. I think they're due for some drama.
Nevertheless: Go Flames.
# posted by Matt @ 11:48 am 
Comments:
The borg is really amazing, they all say the same thing with the same bullet points, which I guess is why you coined them the borg. I'm suprised they could muster up different final scores.
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The borg is really amazing, they all say the same thing with the same bullet points, which I guess is why you coined them the borg. I'm suprised they could muster up different final scores.
# posted by 
: February 05, 2009 3:56 pm
: February 05, 2009 3:56 pm Post a Comment
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