Western Conference

VS

While the Ducks have been one of the better teams in the latter part of the season, I just don’t think they have the depth to beat the Sharks. The Sharks have been a powerhouse in the NHL throughout the entire year and are not going to be an easy opponent in any round. However, I think this will be wildly entertaining series that should go the distance.
Trevor’s Pick: San Jose in 7

VS

Columbus’s first attempt at the playoffs could be short lived. Although the Blue Jackets did have some success against the Red Wings in the regular season (3-3), I don’t believe they have what it takes to beat the veteran Detroit team.
Trevor’s Pick: Detroit in 5

VS

As much as I hate to admit it, any team that has Roberto Luongo between the pipes is going to be difficult to beat. As we have seen many times this year, he can win games single-handedly when the rest of the team decides to take the night off.
Trevor’s Pick: Vancouver in 6

VS

The Flames have had a terrible time trying to handle the young, speedy Chicago Blackhawks this year. Dropping all 4 decisions this season, the Flames are definitely the underdogs in this contest. While the Flames players all seem to be confident that they can win this series, I think this will be a huge undertaking. The Flames fan in me is obviously swaying my decision in this one…
Trevor’s Pick: Calgary in 6

Eastern Conference

VS

What a roll reversal from last year. The B’s are dominant this year while the Habs struggled to make the dance. I predict the Bruins will be too much for the Canadiens and the series will be quick.
Trevor’s Pick: Boston in 5

VS

Any team with Sean Avery deserves to fail miserably and rot on the golf course. While I don’t think this will be an easy task for the Capitals, I believe #8 will prove he is truly the most valuable player in this league and win the series for Washington.
Trevor’s Pick: Washington in 7

VS

While Carolina played tremendously for the second half of the season, and in fact won the season series with the Devils 3-1, I don’t think that the Devils will roll over in the post season and let that trend continue. A healthy Martin Brodeur, snipers like Zach Parise and Patrik Elias, and a post season all-star like Jamie Langenbrunner make the Devils a sure favourite.
Trevor’s Pick: New Jersey in 5

VS

This should be one of the most exciting series in the first round and should go the distance. Both teams are extremely talented offensively, however I believe the more physical team will eventually win.
Trevor’s pick: Philadelphia in 7

After a brief hiatus, I’ve returned…

I’ve been a somewhat regular attendee at Flame Games since January and things were looking great… we all know how the season turned out but a fresh, new, clean slate is at hand and I was thinking about the differences between the teams of the Cup Win, The Last Cup Final and This year…

The major differences in success was defence and goaltending… well, duh! but how does it all compare?  How did and How do the teams look…?

1989… Mike Vernon was 25yrs old, played in only 52 games (reg. season) while Rick Wamsley was 29yrs old and played 35 games… The main defensive core was Al McInnis (25yrs); Rob Ramage (30yrs); Jamie Macoun (27yrs); Ric Nattress (26yrs); Dana Murzyn (22yrs) and Brad McCrimmon (29yrs), they also had a young buck by the name of Gary Suter who was 24yrs old at the time… There was only one player 35 or older who happened to be the Captain, Lanny Mcdonald…

2004… Mikka Kiprusoff was 27yrs old having been a mid-season acquisition and played a mere 38 games while his group of backups (Turek; McLennan and Sabourin) played a total of 48 games.  The main defensive core was Robyn Regehr (23yrs); Jordan Leopold (23yrs); Steve Montador, Andrew Ference and Mike Commodore (all 24yrs) and Rhett Warrener (28yrs)… the greybeard of players 35 and older was the one and only Dave Lowry (38yrs)…

2009… Mikka Kiprusoff is now 32yrs old having averaged 75 games/season (reg. season) for his past 4 seasons and Curtis McElhinney is 25yrs old having only 1 career NHL win to his credit.  The main defensive core is Dion Phaneuf (23yrs); Adrian Aucoin (35yrs); Cory Sarich (30yrs)*; Robyn Regehr*, Jordan Leopold and Jim Vandermeer (all 28yrs) and Adam Pardy (24yrs)… the young bucks of defence include Matt Pelech (21yrs) and John Negrin (19yrs)… the number of 35yrs and older have gone up with Adrian Aucoin (35yrs) and Craig Conroy (37yrs)…

All in all, the summer of 2009 doesn’t look like a long one compared to the previous Stanley Cup Final teams but here are my keys to a long and prosperous 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs for the Calgary Flames.

1) Line chemistry… In Saturdays game in which I sat watching from the Sport Check Zone, Cammalleri and Conroy seemed to hit it off like Iggy and Connie did back in 2004… Jokinen has great hands and maybe better suited to a guy like Bertuzzi (Good ’ol Swiffer man with the one handed puck control and passes) than with Iggy… The simple fact is that Iginla has the prowess to play with anyone and any way… he can bang at rebounds and fight in corners with Nystrom, make pretty passes and give-and-go’s with Langkow or Jokinen and he can find the sniper in Cammalleri on the PP…

2) The Green Hard-hat approach… okay, I get it, the Daryl Sutter days are over but a comittment to the little things and working their butts off worked in 1989 and again in 2004… there is no reason to believe it can’t work in 2009… which leads me to the third and final key…

3) Mike Keenan… He’s lit a fire under every superstar that has played for him and when that supestar gets with the program, he’s succeeded… I’m not convinced that Iggy is 100% with his coach (they’re both fierce competitors but something elusive is going on…)  Keenan has made heros out of guys like Tim Kerr (PHI), Ron Hextall (PHI), Brian Propp (PHI), Chris Chelios (CHI), Ed Belfour (CHI), Mark Messier (NYR), Brian Leetch (NYR), Mike Richter (NYR), Brett Hull (STL), Chris Pronger (STL), Pavel Bure (VAN), Todd Bertuzzi (VAN), Jason Allison (BOS), Joe Thorton (BOS), Olli Jokinen (FLA), Valerie Bure (FLA) and now Mike Cammalleri and Rene Bourque.  Keenan’s only downside that has really hurt him recently (From St. Louis through Calgary) is his goaltending… maybe it’s because he’s has to use Starters for an average of 70+ games/season because of an inadequate backup but seems like his main guys are burnt out or tired at the end of the regular season… everyone from Grant Fuhr (who played 79 games in Keenan’s one full year with the Blues) or Roberto Luongo who played close to or just over 70 games while their time together in Florida up to now having Kipper play 75 games/season in his two years under Iron Mike… Something’s gotta give!

Finally, just food for thought but here is the goalie/defence synopsis of Keenan’s Cup winning Rangers team in 1994.

1994… Mike Richter (27yrs) played 68 reg. season games with Glen Healy (31yrs) playing 29 games… The main defensive core was Brian Leetch (25yrs); Sergi Zubov (23yrs); Jeff Beukaboom (28yrs); Alexander Karpotsev (23yrs); Kevin Lowe (34yrs) and Jay Wells (34yrs)… The greybeards 35yrs and older? The One and only Craig McTavish who was 35yrs old

The Flames of 2009 remind me a lot of this 1994 NYR team having a young stud defencemen (Brian Leetch vs. Dion Phaneuf) with solid stay at home defencemen (Beukaboom & Lowe vs. Regehr & Sarich) Good charactered greybeards (McTavish vs. Conroy) and finally a workhorse of a goalie (Richter vs. Kiprusoff)… All in all, Sutter built this team for Mike Keenan and here’s hoping the Flames bring home the Cup in their 20th Anniversary of winning Cup number 1

Always a Pleasure!

naoto

Ethan Moreau is the latest victim.

Call me crazy, but I can’t really see the argument against wearing a visor.

With a .907 save percentage, and a 2.80 GAA, one might suppose that Miikka Kiprusoff isn’t having a very good season. However, I would venture to say that he has been the primary reason why the Flames are currently sitting comfortably in 1st place in the North West Division. His play of late has been outstanding his saves have been world class.

The Vezina Trophy is awarded annually to the National Hockey League’s goaltender who is “adjudged to be the best at this position”.  Under this definition, Miikka Kiprusoff may not be considered by many as a candidate for this prestigious award. However, if you ask any member of the Calgary Flames, I am certain they would all disagree. Last week’s shut out win over the L.A. Kings, and his play last night versus the Canucks are some of many prime examples of how valuable he has been to the Calgary Flames this year. Night in and night out, he gives the Flames a chance to win.

Here is my Schrute-like evaluation of Miikka Kiprusoff this year:

Fact: Miikka Kiprusoff has played more games than any other goaltender this year. Last night he played in his 53rd game of the season. Every Flames win this year has been backstopped by number 34. His TOI is also the highest in the league playing more than 3100 minutes to this point in the season.

Fact: Kipper has seen more rubber than any other goaltender this year. In total, 1565 shots have been fired in his direction, of which, 1419 of them have been stopped.

Fact: Kipper has more wins than any other goaltender this year. 33 wins already putting him on pace for 47 wins on the season. The current NHL record for wins was set in the 2006-07 season by Martin Brodeur in which he won 48 games. If Kipper can pick up a few extra wins in the coming weeks, he could easily break the record this season.

Fact: Miikka Kiprusoff earned his 4 shutout of the season last week in a 2-0 win over L.A. - this ranks him tied for 6th among NHL goaltenders this season. Thanks to an average of 30.4 shots against per game this season, shutouts have been hard to come by for Kipper and the Flames this year.

Fact: From a Calgary Flames team perspective, Miikka Kiprusoff owns numerous records including most wins in a season, most games played in a season, most shutouts in a season, and most total shutouts for the franchise.

Fact: Without Miikka Kiprusoff between the pipes this year, the Calgary Flames would find themselves in a much different worse situation right now.

ESPN’s NHL player survey results have been released for 2008/09, and Jarome Iginla came out of it looking pretty good this year.

ESPN contacted every team in the NHL and got responses from over 20% of the players in the league for this survey.

Iggy was named both the best leader, as well as the player who would make the best president/prime minister. He also garnered votes as a player that his colleagues would like to trade lives with. None of this comes as a surprise to Flames fans, but it’s good to see that he’s getting that recognition from his colleagues league-wide.

Other notable Calgary inclusions:

• Todd Bertuzzi is considered one of the worst complainers in the NHL, although he trails far behind Sidney Crosby
• We Flames fans are considered among the “most disruptive” in the league
• Kerry Fraser was selected as the best referee in the league. This would suggest that votership was low from the Flames roster

Apparently, there has been quite a controversy around a song produced by a Calgary Sports Radio Station, the Fan 960. The song, called “GOAL”, is a parody of the song “Lola”, performed by the Kinks, and was written the day after the Oilers were beat 10-2 (worst home loss in Oilers History) by the Buffalo Sabres on January 26, 2009.

I found it quite humourous how upset some fans were when they heard it. NHL Message boards and forums lit up with Oiler fans commenting on how “classless” this was. I am not sure where these so-called “fans” have been for the past 25 years, but in case they’ve been living in a bubble, might I remind them of the rivalry that exists between these 2 teams. Seriously. Get over it.

From a biased Flames fan perspective, I found this to be tremendously amusing.

For your listening enjoyment!

(Compliments of Fan 960)

So I’ve given you some time to think about your ideal NHL without clouding your thoughts with my own. Now it’s time to let you know how I think it should be. Let’s go!

Player safety

The NHL has been crowing a lot lately about how they will make decisions that are in the best interest of protecting their players. I’m going to call them on this one, simply because there is still an insistence on keeping touch icing.

Ask Marco Sturm or Kurtis Foster what they think of touch icing. We’ve seen Iginla and Regehr both have scary falls into the boards as a result of this rule as well. Broken legs and sprained ankles are easy to shrug off as a result of a fast and physical game, but it’s only a matter of time before we see a more serious head or neck injury as a result of this rule. The NHL is the only hockey I ever see that maintains this rule (although I realize there are still others); if the IIHF and the CHL can manage with no-touch icing, why is the NHL so adamant on keeping this rule?

With regard to player safety, I would also:

• grandfather mandatory visors into the league
• adopt the OHL’s helmet rule for fighting
• crack-down on players not tightening their chinstraps (if you can fit more than two fingers between your chin and the strap, it isn’t tight enough)

Gameplay

I’m of the belief that the NHL has improved immensely under the new standard of officiating that has been enforced since the lock-out. I think this could be further improved upon by increasing the size of the rink to the International standard. We’ve got an extra referee on the ice now, and bigger, faster players than we used to have. Opening up more space for them to move around out there would make the game more free-flowing, and, in my opinion, more exciting. Opening up that extra space makes it that much more difficult to successfully employ a stymying defensive strategy.

On that note, I’d also like to see more 4-on-4. I’m not a real lover of the shoot-out anyways, so why not play a longer overtime at 4-on-4? Especially on a larger ice surface, I doubt we’d see many games go beyond 10 minutes of overtime anyways. I’d even like to see 4-on-4 overtime adopted for playoff games.

Standings

I’ve made my thoughts on this one known here before: I hate 3-point games! Every game should have the same impact on the standings. That’s why I would endorse a 3-point regulation win and only 2 points for an overtime/shootout win, while the loser still earns a single point. It doesn’t make sense to me that all wins are created equal while all losses are not.

Uniforms

Don’t let the Canucks design their own uniforms anymore. Seriously, they’ve subjected us to enough already.

The Draft

This is the selfish WHL fan in me talking, but bump the draft to 19 year olds. Let the kids play another year in junior hockey. For the most part, I think we’ll see better developed players, and less guesswork for the scouts and GMs on draft day.

Playoffs

Let’s go back to playing out of your division in the playoffs. Remember the 80’s where the Flames were always playing the Oilers, Kings, and Canucks in the playoffs? That’s how real rivalries are built. There’d need to be a bit of divisional re-alignment to facilitate that, or perhaps some type of wild card system like the NFL uses, but I think the fans would appreciate those match-ups, and it would inject that much more excitement into the post-season.

The Schedule

Hack it down to 70 games. Each game means a little bit more, and we can finish the playoffs before the CFL season starts.

Salaries

My economics classes tell me there’s nothing wrong with NHL salaries, since they are what the market will bear; however, I love Bob McCown’s suggestion that rather than earning a dollar value salary, each player earns a percentage of his team’s salary. Teams would then be rewarded financially for each win, thereby increasing each player’s pay incrementally over a reasonable base salary. Check out McCown’s Law for the full description of how this system would work.

This is my great fantasy. I doubt we’ll ever see any of it happen, but if we do, I’ll be happy to take credit for it.

This is an interesting article about the Flames and their intentions on Curtis McElhinney.
(Steve Macfarlane, Calgary Sun)

Your thoughts?

NHL Trade Deadline: March 4, 2009.

With that said, what would you try and accomplish on or before the NHL Trade Deadline? What would you like to see happen?

Some numbers to consider:

Calgary Cap Space remaining for 2008-2009: $2.65 million (Keep in mind that the number crunchers are forecasting a Team Salary Cap of around $52 million for 2009-2010; The 2008-2009 Salary Cap is approx. $57 million)

Expiring Contracts for 2008-2009:
Forwards:
- Michael Cammalleri ($3.35 million; UFA)
- Todd Bertuzzi ($1.95 million; UFA)
- David Moss ($550,000; UFA)
- Andre Roy ($550,000; UFA)
- Marcus Nilson ($1 million; UFA)
- Jamie Lundmark ($660,000; UFA)
Defence:
- Adrian Aucoin ($4 million; UFA)
- Adam Pardy ($500,000; RFA)
- Anders Eriksson ($1.5 million; UFA)
- Rhett Warrener ($2.35 million; Injury Retirement)
Goalie(s):
- Curtis McElhinney ($500,000; RFA)

I’d like to see the team replace Curtis McElhinney… nothing personal, but I’d like to see a veteran goalie who can win games, that’s all… (How about another former Keenan goalie in Ed Belfour? Okay, maybe not… Calling Roman Turek?!) With Adam Pardy deserving of a decent wage hike to around $800,000/yr, I’d say let Aucoin walk and use the savings along with Eriksson and Nilson to pay the raises of Moss, Cammalleri and Bertuzzi… The Flames will have the same defence core with Vandermeer replacing Aucoin and they have good prospects that can fill in the needed forward positions.

For full Salary information, you can go to this link below.

http://www.hockeybuzz.com/cap-central/team.php?team=CGY

Always a pleasure.

I’ve said it before that the Flames need to upgrade this part of the team. I can’t fathom any other reason besides financially that Curtis McElhinney is still serving as the number 2 Goalie in Calgary. The team spent $500,000 last year for Curtis Joseph and got quality backup goaltending with 3 wins in 9 appearances… This year, McElhinney is still trying to get win No.1 as an NHL goalie and looked overly mediocre in his 6-2 loss to the Avalanche.

Just some stats to consider…
Philippe Sauve & Brian Boucher 2005-2006 (11GP 4W-5L, 4.11GAA, .873Sv%)
Jamie McLennan 2006-2007 (9GP 3W-5L-1OTL, 3.60GAA, .895Sv%)
Curtis Joseph 2007-2008 (9GP 3W-2L, 2.55GAA, .906Sv%)
Curtis McElhinney 2008-2009 (5GP 0W-2L-1OTL, 3.70GAA, .892Sv%)

My main argument over replacing McElhinney is simple… winning games. He hasn’t. The games he has started this season so far include Columbus (L, 3-1); Detroit (OTL, 4-3) and Colorado (L, 6-2). The previous backups didn’t have the stellar numbers you would want but at least they won games. I don’t know too much about Sauve and Boucher but watching “Noodles” McLennan in interviews and what not, he was considered by many in the Flames dressing room as a ‘glue’ guy, someone like Conroy who keeps everyone together… Cujo came in with a wealth of experience that garnered the respect of the dressing room but I haven’t read too much as to what McElhinney brings besides trying not to let his butt get numb during games while Mikka the workhorse goes about playing close to every game.

In all fairness, he doesn’t play a lot but neither did the other guys working behind Mikka. The Vancouver Canucks made a play for Jason LaBarera and have now sinced waived Curtis Sanford (sent to Manitoba in the AHL). The Penguins and Oilers swapped backups in Garon and Sabourin. Can the Flames make a splash for a proven winning backup? The Toronto Maple Leafs had a gem in Scott Clemensen (in the AHL last year with the Marlies) but let him leave via free agency and he’s carried the New Jersey Devils to 17 wins in 28GP…

How would McElhinney fare given the chance with the Flames in 28GP? I’m not convinced he could keep the Flames atop the Division, if he were given a chance like this, God Forbid!

Available Goalies for Darryl Sutter to consider? Martin Gerber OTT (recently sent down to the AHL); Curtis Sanford VAN (recently sent down to the AHL); Kevin Weekes N.J.; Olaf Kolzig TB; Marc Denis MTL (Playing for Hamilton in the AHL) and even Jason Bachashihua COL (Playing for Lake Erie in the AHL).

Your thoughts?

Always a pleasure.