“Everything isn’t traditional with Mike, as you see. He does things a little differently sometimes, which I think has been good for us. We usually know if things are good or bad. Mike loves winning. We all love winning. But he loves it as much as any coach I’ve ever played for.” -Jarome Iginla on Mike Keenan
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The Calgary Flames are mired in their first three-game losting streak of the season following a 5-2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks last night, and there are certainly reasons to be concerned. Then again, there are reasons not to be as well. Here are three of each.
Concerning:
- All of the theatrics involving Sutter and Keenan did nothing for this club last night, and that is disappointing. They didn’t look dead, but they didn’t look great, either. Worse, the top players were among the worst last night. Regehr was a -2, Iginla a horrendous -4.
- Todd Bertuzzi had become one of the keys to success, and I still think he is. But one of the ways he got there was the elimination of penalties 75-200 feet from his own net. I’ll concede that probably 20-40% of the penalties called on him wouldn’t be called on someone else (both his strength and his reputation make things look worse for him), but he is now putting himself in those positions again. The Flames depend on momentum off of a sustained forecheck, and you simply cannot keep momentum when you are killing penalties.
- Kiprusoff has shown mortality again. While he has made some incredible saves to keep them in games (especially in the Dallas game), he also has let in a few back-breaking stinkers. The one that rolled in over his shoulder from a poor angle last night was the twist of the knife.
Not concerned
- The Dallas game looked like any game with Dallas (either team could have won), and the other two games could have been far different with a break or two early in the game. The Flames are still getting scoring chances, and they have been in this boat before. Perhaps they need another defensive mini-camp to sharpen their skills. They have some two-day breaks in the near future to take another look at this.
- They have positioned themselves well. This is the first three-game losing streak of the season for them, which is impressive for them but also can be taken for this being the worst they’ve played all year. I see it more as the former. They were not even in some games early in the year, and those stretches weren’t necessarily including Dallas and Chicago.
- The GM and coach idenitified this rough patch long before it was critical. Often-times a team waits until it’s been 5 or 6 games. These two guys have short fuses, and you can expect Sutter to make a change or two soon if this isn’t resolved. In fact, Sutter rarely waits right to the deadline to make his moves. I think the next two weeks is the prime time for Darryl Sutter to make small improvements (small is all that fits in the current budget). All of this said, coaches are lying if they say they don’t like a little of this in the middle of a year. Even the best of teams need to remember that they aren’t invincible, and that the hard work has to continue. These little glitches give the coach some credibility back — they make his voice heard again.
It’s a good thing that there are a lot of tough games coming. The worst thing would be to come out and play uninspired against the bottom-feeders. The Flames have several chances to prove they are one of the top teams in the league. Over the next 2-3 weeks, up to the deadline, we’ll find out if their success this season was a mirage, or if we are looking at a true cup contender. I tend to think we’ll be expecting a push toward June.
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I just got done talking about how great Bertuzzi has been playing, and lauded him for his newfound discipline, and he comes out last night and throws a stinker of a game at the Dallas Stars. I hope that it was merely a matter of having some dead feet and being a little lazy, but one could make the argument that he cost them any chance at gaining some points.
I’ll admit that, when you looked at the schedule before the year, this particular game (before we knew Dallas would get off to a slow start) was one of those they had the least chance of winning. It was the second game of a back-to-backer, the first of which was a tough divisional game, and they had to travel fast and warp forward a time-zone. Still, Dallas played a pretty strict game and it would have only taken a good break in the last half of the third and they would have escaped with at least a point. Instead, they played 40% of that 10 minutes short-handed thanks to two bone-headed penalties by Todd Bertuzzi.
While this loss isn’t a killer, it does magnify a below-average performance from the night before. Couple that with another tough game tomorrow night against Chicago and then Saturday against Anaheim, and we could be looking at the first 3- or 4-game losing streak in a while. On the other hand, tomorrow night’s game is a great opportunity to prove that Calgary is in the top-class in the Western Conference if they can come off of two hard-fought losses and beat a talented Chicago team.
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