Keenan fired because Kiprusoff was bad

Jonathan Willis points out that even if Kiprusoff had just been average, Keenan would not have been fireable.

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Keenan will likely be fall guy

The Calgary Flames had a team with no business losing in the first round.  That’s not taking anything away from Chicago, who played a great series.   Still, the Flames geared up roster-wise for this series and expected more.

Let’s keep in mind that Iginla forgot to show up for most of the series.  Jokinen showed one game of solid effort.  Kiprusoff was his usually horrible self come April.

Let’s also keep in mind that the Flames were without their top defenseman, Robyn Regehr, and Dion Phaneuf for the final game.

Still, when all is said and done, the coach often (unfairly) takes the blame for these kinds of series.  And, it’s not like a person can completely ignore the way the season went.  After  a rough start, the team completely re-tooled their defensive game and went on an amazing tear where they seemed to win the division early in the game.  Except, they peaked too early and never regained that consistency they once had.  Maybe that is a coach’s problem, I’m not sure.

If I had to put a few fingers on what happened in this series I would point to a few things that really were to blame for series loss for the Flames:

1. First and foremost, take away any team’s best defenseman and their chances decrease to almost none.  Think about if Boston lost Chara, if the Wings lost Lidstrom, or if Anaheim lost Pronger.  All three teams would have trouble winning a playoff series without that guy, and all three are very good teams.
2. There were a lot of other injuries that played a key role. All teams are playing hurt this time of year, but when you lose your top two centermen in the same game, lose a 20-goal scorer for a game and a half, and lose your 2nd best defenseman for a critical game 6, you are playing without a very realistic chance.  Sure, Keenan and the boys put on a good face and didn’t cry victim, but the post-mortem should show that this was the case.
3. Kiprusoff was terrible again.  I know people will like to point to some of the goals and say that he didn’t have a chance, but the teams that win have goalies that stop those kinds of shots in games where they’ve only allowed 12-13 shots over the first two periods.  They just do, and Kiprusoff has not proven to be a big-game goalie.  He had one good, seemingly lucky post-season and many of the first-round exits of late can be blamed mostly on him.
4. Jokinen did not live up to the playoff expectations, and Iginla has lost a step.  The former might have been expected, but the latter is disappointing.  Actually, this wasn’t just evident in the post-season.  Iginla is a half-step slow on everything he used to be able to do.  Rarely does he get a good, clean wrister to the net.  It always seems that a guy at least gets a deflection out of play on every shot Iginla takes.  Only a bad bounce seems to find Iginla in a scoring opportunity.  I know people focus on Iginla, but they always have.  He simply doesn’t have what it takes to beat that anymore.  Other guys that are the focus of the opposing team get theirs.  Iginla just doesn’t have that anymore.
5. The Flames were tired.  They played much of the last two weeks short on players because they couldn’t afford to field a full roster and stay under the cap.  That’s a huge disadvantage, not only in terms of wins and losses at the end of the year (and it ultimately cost them the division and an easier first round series against the Blues), but it also caused a lot of extra wear and tear on the Flames best players just before the playoffs.

It’s likely that Keenan will be the fall guy and very quickly.  I don’t think he should be, but reality says that this is what happens when a team can’t seem to get over the hump.  If Darryl Sutter is smart and calculated, however, he’ll realize that there were a lot of circumstances that were far more to blame than a coach who managed a competitive series while having to play the likes of Warrent Peters and Anders Eriksson (Eriksson’s first action of the entire season coming in the post-season).

It’s unfortunate.  My interest in the NHL playoff took a serious hit this evening.

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What can you make of the Calgary Flames?

The Calgary Flames vs. Chicago Blackhawks series has been a fascinating event so far.  It seems to me that the Flames have outplayed the Blackhawks for the most part.  In every game except for game 3 they have blown a significant lead.  Even if only a goal in game 1, it was toward the end when they relinquished the lead.  So, what can we make of this as it applies to the rest of this series?  And what can we make of it as it applies to the future, should some semblance of what has already happened take place and they lose in this round or the next?

Blowing the leads has been a terrible development in the series so far.  They could easily have a commanding 3-1 lead in this series, but they are also only a bad break in game 4 (after giving up those leads) from being down 3-1.  This seems somewhat like bad coaching.  It seems that in a couple of the games they went into a defensive shell, allowing the Blackhawks to pepper Kiprusoff until he broke.  In game four I thought it was the opposite.  They had a 3-goal lead halfway through the game and they failed to tighten up and dumb things down.  That was the time to make sure you chipped pucks in deep and won battles on the boards.  Without a host of odd-man breaks, it was going to be a game they should be able to ride out to victory (essentially the same grinding method they employed in the third period).

That said, Joel Quenneville is getting a lot of credit for the timeout he took when they fell down 4-1, as he should.  At the same time, it seemed to be a no-brainer.  In either case, if you are going to give so much credit to Joel Quenneville, after his team then faded into oblivion, don’t you also have to give the same amount of credit for the no-brainer timeout when they gave up the 4th and tying goal?  The Blackhawks would fail to score for the rest of the game and Calgary would go on to a 2-goal win (including the Iginla empty-netter).

It seems that things are going to be very difficult with the Flames as depleted as they are in terms of human resources.  They are already in a tough spot without Regehr in the lineup, and now they are without a couple of key centermen.  Conroy, in particular, plays a pivotal defensive role by taking key faceoffs and performing well on the penalty kill.  Langkow seems to be a key kick-start for some of the more offensive players.  Whoever plays with him seems to get their chances, even if they don’t always capitalize.

If they should get one or both of those guys back, I like the Flames chances.  If they get Regehr back I think they are clear favorites.  The Blackhawks have done nothing spectacular in this series — nothing that looks like what they did to the Flames in the regular season.  With any additional talent in the favor of an already-superior Flames team, and I think this series is quite skewed in their favor.  On top of that, the Blackhawks have given Iginla the fuel to burn, and Jokinen looks like he’s figured out the level of determination necessary for the playoffs.  Cory Sarich looks like a stud defenseman only a few months removed from being the worst defenseman the Flames regularly put on the ice.

Much was made about the poor record at the end of the season for the Flames.  The people who were watching the games and paying attention know that it wasn’t as bad as the standings showed.  They outplayed several very good teams in tough losses, and they failed to get games into overtime (when just a few would have sealed the division).  Calgary appears to be the superior team in this series and it appears to me that only if Chicago can make their home-ice advantage pay off in games 5 and 7 will they be able to topple Iron Mike’s Calgary Flames.

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