Back on Track. Sort of.

The Flames took advantage of a tired Dallas team to get the victory last night.

To a degree, anyways.

Calgary further improved on a bunch of stuff in yesterday's game: they won the majority of face-offs for a change and their PK was a second away from being flawless. They lead in the hits department and Kipper was the best goalie on the ice.

On the other hand, some of the weaknesses that have been apparent since day one were still quite obviously in attendence: a terrible, terrible powerplay and an easily stuffed break-out. The result of the two was the inabilty to generate more shots than the opposition, another affliction suffered by this club more often than not thus far this season.

I won't rain on the parade any further, however. This win was quite obviously a step in the right direction. The Flames are slowly but surely shoring up their deficiencies while maintaining their strengths. Im not sure that the Calgary break-out will ever improve much (it's been the same the last few years - rim the puck along the boards. Ugh), but one more goal a night out of the PP would do wonders for the Flame's record, no doubt. Consider that Calgary has allowed the 2nd least amount of goals in the league at even strength. If the PK is indeed back on track, Calgary would easily get back into the black in terms of total goal differential if they had any sort of PP worth talking about. And a positive goal differential always = wins.

Positives:

- Tony Amonte. Probably his best game as a Flame. Tireless penalty killer and actually looked dangerous in the offensive zone. All this after I've been ripping into him around here for the last few weeks.

- Roman Hamrlik. He's enjoyed a renaissance since being re-teamed with Phaneuf. Is currently the Flames #1 defenseman.

- Jarome Iginla. Takes draws, kills penalties, sets up teammates on the PP. There's nothing that Jarome currently isn't doing well.

- Andrew Ference. Big fight and a relatively error free evening. Lord I hope he keeps it up.

- Miika Kiprusoff. Although the team played well, Kipper is probably the reason they won the game.

Negatives:

- The PP. 0 for 7 and only 2 shots on goal. Laughable.

- The break-out. I've concluded that the Flames break-out is one of the worst in the league. It's the primary reason the Flames get hemmed in their own end for long sequences. More direct tape to tape passes and something besides rimming the puck to a winger standing still on the half-boards is required.

- Only 17 shots on goal. The Flames actually generated a decent amount of scoring chances, but ended up either making one too many passes or hitting the post most of the time.

- Injury woes. Here we go. With Zyuzin, Friesen and Yelle already on the shelf, messiah-turned-scapegoat Alex Tanguay hurts his shoulder delivering a hit. No word on the extent of the injury yet.

Next up - the mighty (in nature if not by name) Ducks.

NWD Breakdown: Calgary Flames

All the pieces appear to be in place for the Flames heading into the season - a solid top 6 defense corps, a vezina winner in net and a potentially revitalized attack with the addition of Alex Tanguay and Jeff Friesen up front. All that's left is to combine the pieces into a cohesive, formidible whole.

The questions facing the Flames this year include:

- Can Jim Playfair adequately lead the team in Sutter's stead?
- Will the Flames actually be able to score at even-strength?
- Can Phaneuf step up and play top 2 minutes with Robyn Regehr?

2005/2006 Stuff:

103 points, 3rd in the West

216 Goals For (27th)
193 Goals Against (1st)
18.2% PP (12th)
84.2% PK (7th)

Top Scorers:

Jarome Iginla (35 Goals, 67 points, 17 PP goals)
Damond Lankgow (34 Assists)

Forwards:

Subtractions: Shean Donovan, Mike Leclerc, Craig MacDonald
Additions: Jeff Friesen, Alex Tanguay

Calgary has a very similar crop of forwards compared to last year. Friesen draws into Donovan's speedy-third-line-winger spot, while Tanguay fills a top line position that has been vacant for a long, long time. Leclerc and MadDonald were lost via free agency and won't be missed.

The overriding goal for the Flames this year is to...well...score (at even-strength). Offense was Calgary's lone glaring weakness last season and it cost them the series against Anaheim. In order to become a genuine contender and to defend their NW division crown, the Flames should be shooting for middle-of-the pack output; say 250 goals. That's a 34 goal increase from 05/06.

It seems like an obtainable objective on the face of it. The addition of Alex Tanguay should mean an injection of at least 25 more tallies alone. A full year of Kristian Huselius on the 2nd line may also add some red-light replays - Juice scored at a 60 point pace in Flames colors last season (despite Calgary's year long scoring woes). If Jeff Friesen can score more than Shean Donovan (highly doable) and if Tanguay actually rejuvenates Jarome Iginla, the Flames shouldn't have any more significant scoring issues. If want more good news, consider that Tanguay was Colorado's best point producer at even-strength last year...

Course, things that look good on paper don't always translate on the ice. Tanguay has played his whole career sheltered by the shadows of superstars. No longer behind the likes of Sakic, Forsberg and Hejduk, he'll have to step up and prove that he can be a "go-to" guy. In addition, "Flames Hockey" under the Sutter regime has come to mean rough play, stingy defense and a complete lack of risk taking and offensive creativity. It reamins to be seen if Playfair can appropriately harnass and unleash the likes of Iginla and Tanguay without sacrificing the "Flames identity".

The Skinny:

Calgary was terrible at scoring 5on5 last year. Iginla had an off year and most of the support players (Donovan, Yelle, Nilson, Amonte, Lombardi, Simon) were abysmal offensively. A turn-around is not out of the question if Iginla and Tanguay can click with the odd secondary player rebounding from last season. Should one of the top two stars get injured long-term, however, the Flames may be languishing near the bottom of the league in goals for again. Playfair has to prove he can re-jig the offensive systems around the top two lines while keeping the team mean and defensively responsible.

Defense:

Subtractions: Jordan Leopold, Bryan Marchment, Cale Hulse
Additions: Andrei Zyuzin, Mark Giordano

I am glad to see the back of Marchment and Hulse. Good riddance!

The loss of Jordan Leopold, however, is not insignificant. While Leo had a brutal offensive year (like almost everyone not named "Phaneuf" on the Flames last year) last season he was among the leaders in terms of ice-time for Calgary. He played a lot of tough minutes against other team's top players with Robyn Regehr and was a capable puck-mover at either end of the ice.

According to the preseason, it looks like Dion Phaneuf will be stepping up into the top two pairing with Regehr. As a rookie, Phaneuf lead the Flames in ice-time, although a great deal of it was spent blasting pucks at goalie's head on the powerplay. It will be up to the super-rookie now sophomore to prove he can take on the leagues best night in and night out. Being paired with Regehr certainly won't hurt in that regard.

Leo's loss will be further off-set by the acquisition of Andrei Zyuzin. Zyuzin was a 19 minute-man with the Wild last season. While he doesn't strike me as competent a defender as Leopold, he should be able to eat up between 18-20 minutes per night on the second pairing with Hamrlik well enough. His 7 goals from the blueline will also be a welcome addition above Leopold's 2.

The real challenge here may simply be staying healthy. Thanks to injuries to Warrener, Hamrlik, Regehr and Leopold the Flames only played with a full compliment of their top 6 defensemen 30 or so games last season. Of course, should anyone go down, Calgary has two-time preseason stand-out Mark Giordano waiting in the wings. Giordano lead the Omaha Knights in points last season (despite playing some games in the pros) and was the only Flame to play in all 7 exhibition tilts this September. He won't be put anywhere near top 4 type situations, but he should prove to be an adequate 6th spot fill-in...

The Skinny:

The blueline is unquestionably Calgary's strength. From top to bottom, the Flames have the best defender depth in the division - keep in mind Calgary managed to allow the fewest goals against in the league last season despite having so many d-man injuries.

Goaltending:

Miikka Kiprusoff is roundly considered one of the two best goalies in the NHL. He was top 5 in basically every significant goaltending statistical category last season and is the most recent recipient of the Vezina trophy. The only issues facing Kipper are:

- Can he better in the shoot-out? Calgary lost a lot of points to shoot-outs last year. Partially because Kipper was among the worst in the league in S/O save percentage.

- Can he avoid a slow start? Imagine the stats Kiprusoff WOULD have generated in 05/06 had he not been Raycroft-esque in his first 10 games. There were signs in September he might be in for a repeat of last October's suckage when he was lit up during his first two preseason contests. Hopefully, that can be avoided this time around though.

Calgary will also need some semi-capable work out of their back-up, Jamie McLennan, this season. Both Sauve and Boucher proved to be terrible in their limited roles last year, meaning they were played as little as possible. If McLennan can be a 2.50 GAA /.900 SP in 10 or 15 starts he could take some of the pressure off of Kiprusoff. His career stats suggest it's possible.

The Skinny: In combination with their defense corps., the Flames have little to worry about on the back-end. I expect Kipper to once again challenge for the Vezina by year end. Of course, Injury is a HUGE concern given that McLennan would not be able to take the reigns in Kipper's absence...

Conclusion:

Calgary won the division last year and they've only gotten better while most of their division rivals have either taken lateral steps (Edmonton) or gotten worse (Vancouver, Colorado). If the Flames can figure out how to score with regularity there's no reason to think they won't be one of the best teams in the conference.

Prediction:

1st in the Northwest Division and 3rd in the Western Conference.

NW Division Breakdown: Edmonton Oilers

With the loss of Chris Pronger and Jaroslav Spacek on the back-end, it looks like it's going to be a year of all-out barn-burner hockey up in the chuck this season. line after line of swift, offensively adept forwards will have to make up for the obvious deficiencies on the blueline (and, potentially, beyond). The Oil are a difficult puzzle to crack in terms of predictions this off-season: if things go right, they could challenge for the division lead. If not, they could be duking it out with the other cellar-dwellars.

The main questions facing this squad include:

- Can the rag-tag Oiler blueline hold up over the season?
- Can Roloson be the #1 guy at 37 years old?
- Can Edmonton's young forwards continue to prove they are legitimate offensive players?

2005/2006 Stuff:

95 points, 8th in the West

249 Goals For (15th)
242 Goals Against (12th)
18.1% PP (12th)
84.1% PK (8th)

Top Scorers:

Ales Hemsky (77 points)
Ryan Smyth (36 goals, 19 PP goals)
Ales Hemsky (58 assists)

Forwards:

Subtractions: Radek Dvorak, Georges Laraque, Rem Murray, Todd Harvey, Mike Peca
Additions: Joffrey Lupul, Petr Sykora, Alexei Mikhnov, MA Pouliot

The Oilers were a middle of the pack scoring team last year and have added a couple of 25-30 goal guys in the off-season. Lupul, who was a key piece in the Pronger deal, is a budding sniper who should bring another 25 goals minimum to the mix. Expect to see him garner top line minutes. Sykora hasn't been the same since leaving the swamp, but he should still be good for at least another 20 goal season. Especially surrounded by so much offensive potential.

The players the Oil lost to free agency were all pretty much checking line fodder. Murray and Harvey are still looking for jobs I believe while Laraque was exiled to the Desert of misfit players. Peca left to retire in Toronto and Dvorak will be plumbing the depths with the Blues this season. Of the departures, Dvorak is probably the only one worth anything. While he'll probably never come close to 30 goals again, he seemed to have utility as a speedy 3rd line checker. He scored 28 points last year, 5 more than Peca, and was a great deal cheaper. As for Michael, he managed just 23 points in 71 games for his 4 million bucks and was a -4. Play-off heroics aside, Im sure most Edmonton fans are pleased to see the back of him.

Perhaps one minor area of concern for the Oilers forwards ranks is the fact that 6 of their forwards enjoyed career seasons last year. Hemsky jumped from 34 points in 03/04 to 77 in 05/06. Horcoff had a similar quantum leap, moving from 33 points in 02/03 and 40 points in 03/04 to 70 points last season. Jarett Stoll, tabbed by many to be a gritty, 2-way centerman, increased his 21 points in 68 games from 2 years ago to an impressive 68 points in his first full season. Ryan Smyth, the bedgraggled, mullet-bearing King of crease-crashing managed 36 markers last year, the second highest of his career behind his 96/97 total of 39. Smyth has only ever cracked the 30 goal plateau once before, back in 00/01. Finally, Fernando Pisani and Raffie Torres also experienced mild increases in their point totals, both garnering 7 more points relative to his best year.

The dark-side-of-the-moon for the Oil faithful is that it's fairly rare to see players best their career stats immediately after setting them. If the above guys can maintain or improve on their offensive stats from last season, Edmonton will be fine. It's rather probable, however, that one of (if not all) Hemsky, Horcoff or Stoll will regress slightly this season. Should Edmonton be able to keep the puck out of the net as well or better than they did last season (big IF) and should Lupul and Sykora prove to be effective barriers against the other guys predicted regression, this MAY not be much of an issue. Perhaps...

The Skinny:

The Oil probably won't struggle to score goals but they aren't going to lead the league either. Lots of young talent and depth with 0 high-end game breakers and the possibility of a couple players taking a step-back, numbers-wise, thrown in to complicate things. Virtually immune to injury issues thanks to depth, however.

Defense:

Subtractions: Chris Pronger, Jaroslav Spacek, Igor Ulanov, Cory Cross, Dick Tarnstrom
Additions: Ladislav Smid, Jan Hejda, Daniel Tjarnqvist

There's a big, sucking black hole on the Oiler's blueline left by the departures of Pronger and Spacek...

how big?

Pronger scored 56 points and played over 2,200 minutes last season. The only player to even approach seeing an equivalent amount of ice was...yup...Jaroslav Spacek at about 1,800 minutes (not all of it was with the Oilers, of course). 3rd and 4th on the club were Staios and Bergeron with 1,712 and 1,591 minutes total respectively. All told, Pronger averaged 28 minutes a night and lead the team in multiple categories such as average SH minutes (5:11/game) and PP minutes (6:40/game) played.

Basically, Pronger was the "anchor" that granted Oiler's forwards "license to soar". He played 7 minutes more per contest than any remaining defender and was the leader in practically every situation on the ice. Im fairly certain that Pronger's presence had something to do with the sudden and impressive jumps in several of the young forwards point totals last season and therefore think his departure will be a significant cause of their impeding regression this season.

Of course, Pronger also had something to do with keeping pucks out of the net as well. Lacking "The Orbs of Power" on the back-end will mean a lot more ice-time for the likes of Staios, Smith and Bergeron this season. Of the three, only Bergeron averaged more than 20 minutes in 05/06, and 4.5 minutes of that was on the PP. The question remains whether guys like Smith and Staios can step up and play top 2 minutes competently for an entire season. Especially since new faces Smid and Hejda may have to be sheltered a bit in light of their lack of experience. Tjarnqvist was a 20 minute/night player over 60 games for the Wild last year, meaning he'll have to step into a top 4 roll at the very least. Keep in mind, however, that Tjarnqvist has never played more than 75 games in 4 seasons and has never been a (+) player yet in his career. He'll have to take a pretty sizable step forward if the Oilers want him to take part in the heavy lifting all year.

Smid and Hejda are the unknown commodities here. By all reports, Smid is an excellent prospect and should develop into a decent player. Course, it's unknown whether he will immediately make significant Ballard/Seabrook/Phaneuf type contributions. If not, youngster Greene and newcomer Hejda may be leaned on for an uncomfortable number of minutes each night...

Course, it all gets REALLY ugly should the likes of Staios or Smith get injured for any length of time.

The Skinny:

The Oilers have to pray for career-type seasons out of their top 4 defenders in order to be competent, defense-wise. It will be hugely beneficial if the likes of Smid and Hejda prove to be adequate NHLer's. If not, any kind of long-term infirmary time for Smith or Staios could prove disasterous. Thanks to their cap space and wealth of forwards, a trade for a d-man mid way through the year is not out of the question.

Goaltending:

Dwayne Roloson played 19 games after the trade deadline in Edmonton colors last year, and managed 8 wins and a 2.42 GAA (.905 SP) in that time. The challenge facing the former Flame this season is to duplicate or improve those numbers over the long haul behind a completely Pronger-less (or even a reasonable facsilime-less) defense corps. Over the course of his NHL tenure, Roloson has avergaed just 36 games/season; the 50 contest 02/03 year being the high water mark. He's 37, just signed the most lucrative contract of his career and has never been a starting goalie. Hmmmm...

To be fair, Roloson does have gawdy career bests (1.88 GAA, 0.933 SP), which suggest some measure of skill. It's notable, though, that he typically hovered around rather mediocre numbers until the 02-04 season(s) with the Wild. Overall, really, his career year looks more like an aberration than a sign of impending stardom.

The Skinny:

If Roloson falters in a Belfourian fashion this year it may well sink the Oil. He's a 37 year old career back-up who will either fight valiantly to prove he's a legit NHL starter or will take his new fat contract and fade into the horizon. Injury and stamina are also a concern.

Conclusion:

Edmonton is an utter enigma heading into the season. Should things go right and their forwards prove immune to regression, their unknown defensemen step up and Roloson defy all odds, Edmonton could be top 5 in the conference. On the other hand, the loss of Pronger and lack of high-end talent on the back-end could well create a shooting gallery that may prove to be beyond Roloson's ability or stamina to handle. Lots of IF's to ponder. Somewhere in the middle, and the Oil battle for 8th spot again.

Prediction:

Part of me thinks Edmonton will out-do the likes of Colorado and Dallas and place 7th in the conference. Then again, the Flames fan part of me is screaming 10th.

The Hockey Pool Post

It's the most wonderful time of the year - the start of hockey season and, therefore, hockey pools!

This season's Five Hole Fanatics pool was set-up by Chunky Moose and Alex. The rules governing the draft and points were established as follows:

- Live draft format.
- Teams will consist of 10 forwards, 4 defensemen and 1 goalie. Goalies will be drafted seperately from skaters.
- 1 "darkhorse" selection per player. The DH will be submitted anonymously at the conclusion of the draft and cannot be a goalie. Any matching darkhorses are disqualified.

- Point System:

Skaters points -

- Goal: 2 points
- Assist: 1 point
- OT goal: +1 (bonus)

Goalie points -

- Goalie Win: 1 point
- Team Win: 1 point
- Shut-out: +2 points (bonus)
- Assist: 2 points
- Goal: 8 points

- Four trades allowed during the season. Only players on the "free agent" list are open for selection.

This was my first draft with a "darkhorse" choice and I've concluded that I like it. The challenge of choosing a decent player, while at the same time trying to avoid selecting the same guy as someone else, spices things up a little turns the end of the draft into something of a poker match.

(click to enlarge)

The draft took place this weekend. Above are the 12 "GM's" (including all 5 Five Hole Fanatics contributors), their teams and the order in which the players were selected. Altogether, 168 skaters were drafted, plus 12 goalies and 12 darkhorses. Dany Healtey went #1 overall and Pittsburgh d-man Ryan Whitney was the last guy taken at #168. The draft was done in sections and took all bloody weekend. The darkhorse picks were sent in and finalized yesterday.

Points of interest:

- Khabibulin was selected despite his terrible season last year AND the fact that 'tender's accrue points based on wins (both by them and by the team as a whole). Hmmm...does GM Krahn know something I don't?

- Iginla was the top Flame to be selected at #9 although Tanguay wasn't far behind at #18. Phaneuf was the first defensemen to be taken at #30. Altogether, 10 Calgary players were drafted - Iginla, Tanguay, Phaneuf, Lombardi, Huselius, Hamrlik, Regehr, A. Ference, Langkow and Kipper.

- Kiprusoff was snagged first in the goalie draft, of course. Ryan Miller was the surprise second choice, followed by Brodeur. I selected Vokoun with the 8th pick. The fact that Nashville will play the likes of Chicago, St. Louis and Columbus all year forced my hand.

- The average age of the oldest team selected: 34.31 (Thomsen).

- The team with the most Canadians: 12 of 16 (Tyler).

- Players that went undrafted: Modin, Brunette, JP Dumont, PM Bouchard, Bulis.

- On a "You can't make this kind of shit up" note - Alex Hemsky was the first Oiler selected at pick #44(!).

My team and Strategy:

Seeing as goals are worth double that of assists, I made sure to tab goal getters and top powerplay guys in my draft. Although I was stuck in the 8th position, I still managed to grab Kovalchuk as my first selection. My rationale? Kovalchuk's goal totals have been steadily increasing since he broke into the NHL (29, 38, 41 and 52) meaning he's in line for a pretty massive season. It also helps that he's deadly on the PP.

Another strategy I employed this year was "linking" linemates: by grabbing a decent offensive line, goals can often be worth 3 points (goal+assist) rather than just 2 (goal). Thus my Hossa pick - not only is he a first unit PP linemate of my first round selection, he's also a pretty damn consistent point-getter (he hasn't had less than 30 goals in the last 5 seasons). Should be a pretty lethal combination. Some other linked (potential) linemates on my team include Briere, Afinogenov and Kotalik. Basically, I wanted to get a healthy piece what I think will be a deadly Sabre PP.

As you can see, I chose 3 of my 4 d-men in the final rounds. Unless you're talking about Lidstrom or Niedermayer, I find it prudent to select blueliners at the end of the draft; why waste a mid-round pick on a 45 point getter when you could be taking a 70 point forward? Especially since there are typically a lot of 40 point d-men remaing in the end. As for my selections, I think Redden has the capacity to bag a 60+ point season as the #1 guy in Ottawa (thus my making an exception for him and taking him in round 5). I picked up Beauchemin because I believe (hope?) he'll get some significant PP time with Anaheim, even with Pronger in the mix. I picked up Campbell because he'll be spending time on the Sabres top PP unit and I chose Van Ryn because he's quietly scored 22 goals for Florida the last 2 seasons. Overall, if my defenders average about 40 points between them, I'll be happy.

Incredibly, Mark Bell lasted all the way to round 7, where I got him with the 80th selection. If he sticks on the Thornton-Cheechoo line I may just end up with the steal of the draft.

Marco Sturm was my next selection. A lot of people forgot about Sturm in the wake of Thornton's Art Ross season, but he did gather 29 goals playing on Boston's first line. This year, he'll be playing with one of Bergeron or Savard at center and should be a member of a first unit PP that will also include guys like Chara, Mara and/or Stuart. A 30+ goal season is not not out of the question for Marco.

Kovalev was the first Canadiens taken in the draft. I picked him 104th overall! He's a bit of risk, granted, thanks his penchant for getting injured and taking weeks off at a time. However, he should get top PP minutes in Montreal and does have the capacity to put together a 30-40 goal campaign (if everything goes right). I figured the risk was worth the reward this late in the proceedings.

I've been beating the drum for Kristian Huselius recently, so I plucked him with choice #113. He was Calgary's best player with the man-advantage last season and scored at a 60 point pace while wearing the Flaming C. Should Juice land on the first unit PP with Iggy and Tanguay there's no reason not to expect a career year out of him. In addition, I couldn't in good conscience be a Calgary fan and not select a single Flame.

Finally, I agonized and agonized over my DH pick. Everytime I thought of the "perfect guy" I managed to convince myself it was too obvious a choice and someone else was going to select him. Possibilites that occured to me included McAmmond, Ponikarovsky, Penner, Perry, Rucchin, Amonte, Brunette and Modin. In the end, I settled on Branko Radivojevic, thanks in part to some rumblings that he may be playing on the first line in Minnesota.

So that's it, the die is cast. I'm pretty pleased with my roster and have yet another reason to eagerly anticipate the start of the season.

PS - Special thanks go out to Chunkymoose for the incredible amount of work he put in to facilitating the draft and everything else this past week or so. Kudos!

Rookie Intrasquad Game Notes

I managed to catch most of the scrimmage between the hopefuls for the coming season last night. In many cases, it was my first live and up-close observation of the player in question (in other cases, it was the first time I'd even heard of the guy - Chris Neiszner?).

Initially, the experience was a little overwhelming - trying to diligently follow two full teams of nameless players during a game is akin to counting grains of sand while the tide's coming in. Thankfully, the Flames provided a sheet detailing each players team affiliation (Red or Black) and their jersey numbers. Unfortunately, trying to match number to player through the roster sheet while keeping on eye on play at all times proved to be a bit of challenge. Of course, as the game progressed, certain stand-outs became familiar to me, negating the need to glance at the RS every other time they touched the puck.

For those interested few that were unable to attend, follow the link to some brief youtube material provided by "Furnaceface" from the Calgarypuck.com messageboards:

Link.

(Thanks FF)

Also, the official Flames site has notes on the game here.

My Thoughts:

The Good

- The best goalie of the evening was Leland Irving. He was flawless during the third period, which included a very impressive cross-crease pad save on Eric Nystrom. All the other tenders I saw were roughly equal to each other.

- Justin Taylor (C) was surprisingly good, especially in the 2nd period. He seemed to have decent offensive instincts and made a couple of notable plays down low. Also scored Team Black's second goal.

- Andrei Taratukhin (C) was fairly decent, though he seemed to fade in the third period. He scored a snap-shot-through-the-legs goal in the second period and was an active participant in either end of the rink. He tended to get winded faster than the other players and took shorter shifts, though.

- Eric Nystrom (LW) was decent all around, but was especially effective along the boards. He probably should have scored on the 2on1 against Irving (mentioned above), but he was still clearly one of the better players there.

- Dustin Boyd (C) while being one of the smaller guys was also one of the faster ones. He seemed a little "manic" at times - quick and panicy - but he asserted himself well overall. He managed to make some nice moves breaking in against defensemen.

- Daniel Ryder (C) impressed me throroughly. One of the younger and, like Boyd, more diminuitive players, Ryder still managed to score a goal and was part of one of the best forward trios on the ice near the end of the game (Ryder, Germyn, Prust). He made smart, crisp passes and often seemed to be in the place at the right time. I can't wait to see him here again next year.

- Adam Cracknell (RW) scored with a laser beam to the top corner in the 3rd period, and generally seemed dangerous in the offensive zone most of the night. May be a late, late round steal should he do well in the AHL this season.

- Richie Regehr and Tim Ramholt (D) formed a pretty steady duo for Team Red. Ramholt managed to stand up two advancing forwards in sequence during one play. Regehr was just plain solid all over the ice.

- Mark Giordano (D) popped up here and there. I would go for long stretches without noticing him and then suddenly a d-man would make a great first pass or decent rub-out and I'd have to look up his number again.

- Brandon Prust (LW) was both fast and hungry. I think he had two assists on the night, the best one was a two-on-one feed to Carsen Germyn. Differentiated himself well from a lot of the other hopefuls I thought.

The Bad

- Kris Chucko (RW) was completely unremarkable. To the degree that I had to specifically look for his jersey number to ensure that we was, in fact, playing. I can't remember a single Chucko shift or even play.

- Matt Pelech (D) was similar to Chucko; didn't really stand out. The one time I really noticed him he was "unleashing" a puck at curling speed from the point. Will most assuredly be returning to Junior this year.

- Myles Rumsey (D) was clearly over his head. I doubt you will ever hear his name in the big league.

- John Armstrong (C) was pretty much invisible as well. He has a bunch of years ahead of him, however, so that's not a big concern.

- I expected to see to see more of last year's AHL guys Tomi Maki (LW) and Cam Cunning (LW), but neither of them made any kind of lasting mark.

The final score in the game was 4-2 in favor of Team Red. Cracknell, Germyn, Taratukhin and Ryder scored for the victors while Taylor and Van Der Gulik replied for Team Black.

For those of you that missed last night's tilt the re-match is set for tonight at the saddledome. If guys like Chucko and Pelech assert themselves with some kind of authority, Team Black might be able to avenge Sunday night's defeat...

Flames Pre-Season Begins

Calgary's official start to the pre-season began yesterday with the initiation of the rookie portion of training camp. Here's a lengthy training camp roster that includes all 65 invited players (7 goalies, 19 defensemen, 39 forwards). Apparently, on-ice sessions and practices are open to the public - the first rookie inter-squad game takes place this Sunday afternoon at the Saddledome for all those who are interested. As far as the Big Boys are concerned, main camp opens September 15th and is quickly followed up by the first pre-season match-up September 17th against the Florida Panthers.

If, like me, you're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of players on the training camp roster, Hockey's Future has a more succinct list of the Flames top 20 young 'uns to keep an eye on (21 if count Brent Krahn, who is conspicuously absent for some reason).

Surrounded by rosters and lists and such, I figured the thing to do would be to make my own. Following are those prospects I consider the most interesting:

1.) Brent Krahn - G - A top selection back into 2001, Krahn had his development derailed first by injuries and then by lack of playing time (he was second fiddle in the Lowell system when the Flames shared an affiliate with Carolina). In 05/06, Krahn was finally able to play a full year as the #1 and he didn't disappoint. Even though the Omaha Knights failed to make the post-season, Krahn managed 26 wins, 3 shut-outs and a 2.50 GAA - the latter stat was the 3rd best in the league, ahead of other notable prospects Jimmy Howard (Detroit Red Wings), Josh Harding (Minnesota Wild) and Al Montoya (New York Rangers).

Most observers think this will be Krahn's "make or break season". If he doesn't beat out Jamie McLennan for the back-up position, he will have to be a dominant player in the AHL in order to remove all doubt for next year. Expect him to get some time in the NHL if there's an injury (god forbid) or if McLennan falters.

2.) Eric Nystrom - LW - Nystrom nearly won a spot with the big club last year before being sent down to the minors for some seasoning. By all accounts, Nystrom is a fiesty fore-checker, good skater and an excellent locker-room presence. On the negative side, he failed to put up significant offensive numbers in the AHL last year which probably means he'll never make much of an offensive impact at the NHL level. Unfortunately, that's what the Flames desperately need right now. However, Nystrom, like Nilson and Yelle, promises to have utility as a checking winger and penalty killer, so if either one of the aforementioned Flames players goes down to injury, expect Nystrom to get the call.

3.) Andrei Taratukhin - C - Recently, Darryl Sutter went on record to say that Taratukhin is probably the most talented prospect in the Flame's system. He's relatively old (23) and has already played at the pro level in the Russian Super League the last couple of years. He was also one of the few players on the most recent Russian Olympic team that wasn't already playing in the NHL. While his stats from playing in Russia aren't mind-blowing (9 goals, 15 assists in 40 GP) the difference in the play and scoring in the Super League make it difficult to accurately assess scoring prowess from stats alone. According to his "talent analysis" at russianprospects.com, Taratukhin is an average skater and shooter, but an excellent puck-handler and passer. Determination and work ethic are also mentioned as strengths.

As far as this coming season is concerned, 'Tukhin is a bit of a wild card. His age and experience should stand him in good stead to challenge for a spot on the Flames. He could end up usurping Byron Ritchie's place as the 13th forward, though he'll most likely draw into the Omaha Knights line-up - largely because he's never played NA hockey before and may need additional experience in that regard (also, he has a two-way contract). However, should the likes of Lombardi or Lundmark falter during the season, expect to see Taratukhin in the big line-up sooner rather than later.

4.) Tim Ramholt - D - The "other" defenseman selected behind Dion Phaneuf in 2003, Ramholt kicked ass in the QMJHL that year with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles - 9 goals and 27 assists in 51 games. By all accounts, he was set to have a bright future in the Nother American Junior ranks before he was lured back to Switzerland for monetary reasons. Back home, Ramholt's development seemed to stall - in 83 games with Zurich and Kloten, he scored just 1 goal and 4 assists thanks to relatively limited ice time.

Now that he's returned to this side of the pond, Ramholt will have to make siginificant strides towards becoming the player many thought he could be before his Swiss hiatus. If he can rediscover his form with top two type minutes on the farm, Ramholt will no doubt be challenging for a spot on the parent squad next season. I will definately be keeping an eye on his AHL numbers as this year progresses.

5.) Kris Chucko - RW - The Flames signed him to a pro contract in May - basically to rescue him from playing at the University of Michigan. While UofM is rumored to have a good system, Chucko had seemingly fallen through the cracks and his development was stagnating. Playing behind other notable prospects, like Phil Kessel, Chucko was resigned to third line checking type minutes - hardly the ideal situation for a first round draft pick.

According to scouts, Chucko is a big guy with a good stride and is strong on the puck. No one's really sure if he can score or not, thanks to his lackluster college numbers (which aren't reflected by some of his decent scoring totals as a minor hockey player), so it remains an open question heading into his first pro season. I don't think we'll see Chucko in the NHL this year, but with a decent AHL season he could be replacing the likes of Amonte or McCarty next October.

6.) Daniel Ryder - C - Ryder might be Calgary's most exciting prospect. He scored 20 goals in his rookie year in the OHL, followed by 29 goals the year after and 38 goals during the most recent campaign. In last season's OHL play-offs, Ryder scored 15 goals and 16 assists in just 19 games and won the Wayne Gretzky award for best play-off performer.

However, it's not just his stats that are intriguing. An OHL coaches poll conducted in the 05/06 season revealed that Ryder was considered a top player in various categories:

voted 3rd "smartest player"
voted 3rd "best on face-offs"
voted 1st "best penalty killer"

A prospect that can take face-offs and kill penalties while leading the team in scoring? Can't remember the last time we've seen something like that in the Flames system - usually it's mostly the penalty-killing type without the scoring ability.

This year, I expect Ryder to be returned to the Peterborough Petes for another year of Junior. If his prior play is any indication, I also expect him to dominate...

7.) Dustin Boyd - C - Boyd had a break-out season as an older guy in the WHL last year. He scored 48 goals and 42 assists in 64 games with the Moose Jaw Warriors, nearly 30 points better than his previous season totals. He also made Canada's Junior Team and was a key component on the gold medal squad.

To me, Boyd is a bit of a question mark. He didn't really do a lot until his final season in the Junior ranks. Either he had some sort of epiphany or was simply an overager taking advantage of an ideal situation. If Boyd turns out to be the real deal, Calgary is gonna have to figure out what to do with all these centers in a couple of years. If not, he'll be a competent AHL player for the rest of his career.

My Other Notables: Matt Pelech, Mark Giordano, Richie Regehr, Brandon Prust.

Overall, it should be an interesting camp. The Flames roster doesn't have a lot of vacancies going into the season, but there are definately some positions which may become available thanks to either veteran injury (Amonte, McCarty, Nilson, Yelle, McLennan) or a project player faltering (Lundmark, Friesen, Lombardi). While I don't think players like Nystrom or Taratukhin will make the Flame's opening night roster, I wouldn't be surprised to see them donning Calgary silks at some later point(s) in the season.

Flames Summer Summary

Assuming the highly dubious rumors regarding a Devils/Flames swap never come to fruition, it looks like Calgary is finished for the summer. And even though the last few weeks have been rather barren, news wise, the summer was a rather busy one for the Flames organization nonetheless. I figured an off-season re-cap was in order, therefore. Enjoy!

May 11 -

Calgary re-signs Stephane Yelle to a 2 year, $2.8 million contract.
Everyone knows Yelle is a Sutter favorite, due in no small part to his tireless work ethic and excellent defensive prowess. A fact clearly demostrated by the rapidity with which Sutter locked him up.

June 6 -

The only guy to get a hat trick in a Flames uniform last year scores a 2 year, $2.4 million deal. The challenge facing Charles Kobasew this coming season is to build on his 20 goals from last year while improving his defensive zone play. That, and not getting clobbered by opposing defensemen every shift.

June 24 -

The Big trade. Sutter sends Jordan Leopold and a 2nd rounder to Colorado for Alex Tanguay. Flames finally acquire another legitimate scoring threat to compliment Iggy. Subsequent analysis of the trade shows that Tanguay excels at ES scoring which was the Flames biggest weakness in 05/06. Wicked.



June 29 -

Rumors begin to surface that the Flames may sign Jeremy Roenick. It came out later that JR had narrowed the choices to Calgary or Phoenix before finally settling on the Coyotes for Family reasons (lived there previously). Whew. Course, should Roenick experience some kind of renaissance in the desert, we may be left lamenting that fact later. But I doubt it.


July 2 -

Sutter plugs the Leopold hole on the blueline by signing former first rounder Andrei Zyuzin to a 2 year, $2.8 million deal. Zyuzin played under Sutter during his days in San Jose and was hopeful Calgary would be one of the teams interested in his services. He reportedly told his agent to "get a deal done" should the Flames give him a call. Mission accomplished.

July 3 -

Chris Pronger gets traded to Anaheim. Not necessarily Flames news, but...I like to rub salt in wounds.

July 5 -

Busy day. Sutter locks up Tanguay for 3 years @ $5.25 million/year and decides to get charitable by giving Friesen a 1 year, $1.6 million chance at redemption. There are some Flames fans arguing that both of these player will end up playing on the #1 scoring unit with Jarome, but Im guessing it will most likely be one over the other. Can you guess which one?

July 6 -

Popular back-up goaltender Jamie McLennan returns to Calgary for just over $500,000. Everyone was sad to see him go at the deadline back in '04, as much for his comical antics as for his play on the ice. He should be an ideal back-up for Kipper this year (jovial, friendly and able to play 10-15 games well and without complaint).

July 8 -

Sutter steps down from his head coaching duties in order to concentrate on his role as GM. Predictably, the reigns are handed over to assistant coach Jim Playfair. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on the team, though most Flames fans consider it a positive move.

July 12 -

The NHL releases the 06/07 schedule. Notable Flames matches include 3 games against the greasers (season opener, New Years Eve, season ending) as well dome visits from Alexander Ovechkin and the Stanley Cup Champion Carolina Hurricanes.

July 27 -

Sutter Signs blueline bruiser Brad Ference. I didn't like this signing much at the time and, in retrospect...I still don't. While Ference will probably be an injury fill-in during the season I still don't really see him exceling - even in that relatively limited role. Oh well. Maybe he'll prove me wrong.

August 4 -

Eric Godard becomes the Flame's next hired goon. Waste of money if you ask me. At least it's a two-way contract.

August 17 -

In what looks to be the final move of the Summer, Sutter and Lombardi finally come to terms. Lombo is re-upped for $1.6 million over the next two seasons. Cheap contract, good offensive potential, no complaints.

Quick-Reference Stuff -

Off-season Additions/Subtractions:

In

Alex Tanguay
Jeff Friesen
Andrei Zyuzin
Jamie McLennan
Brad Ference
Eric Godard

Out

Bryan Marchment (UFA)
Shean Donovan (Signed with Boston)
Cale Hulse (UFA)
Brian Boucher (UFA)
Chris Simon (Signed with NYI)
Craig MacDonald (Signed with Chicago)
Jordan Leopold (Traded for Alex Tanguay)

Current Cap Number - 41.603
Cap Space - 2.397
Number of Players signed - 23
Average Age of Players - 28.4
(numbers gleaned from cataloupehalves Salary Site. See link on the sideboard).

Depth Chart*:

Huselius - Tanguay - Iginla
Friesen - Langkow - Kobasew
Lombardi** - Lundmark - Amonte
Nilson - Yelle - McCarty

(Ritchie, Godard)

Phaneuf - Regehr
Zyuzin - Hamrlik
Warrener - A. Ference

(B. Ference)

Kiprusoff
McLennan

(Krahn)

*(Not meant to reflect potential line combinations)
**(Lombardi listed on left-wing thanks to Calgary's plethora of centers)

Overall, Im fairly pleased at where the team sits currently. Calgary has 2 decent offensive lines, a formidible blueline corps. and a Vezina winner in net. not to mention a bit of cap space to work with should the line-up need tweaking during the season. I could have lived without some of Sutter's signings this off-season (Godard, Ference), but I think the good far out-weighs the bad...

*EDIT - Lombardi numbers listed above are false. He was only re-signed for a single season ($800,000). My bad.

Phoenix - The NHL's Island of Misfit Toys

With the news that Owen Nolan is apparently going to sign with Phoenix I went about wondering (not for the first time) what exactly the game plan is down in the ol' desert.

At a casual glance one is struck with the preponderance of, for lack of a more polite term, NHL cast-offs and "B rate" pseudo-stars peppering the line-up. For example:

- $3 million man Mike Comrie was run out of Edmonton on a rail. He was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in 03/04 where he played a mere 21 games before being dumped to the Coyotes for some spare parts (Burke, Radivojevic, prospect). Apparently his experiences in Edmonton were so..."significant", TSN sees fit to list them as a "flaw" in his scouting report:

Doesn't have ideal NHL size. Must put his Edmonton ordeal behind him. Needs to work on his play without the puck.

That can't be good.

- Oleg Saprykin. A first round draft pick of the Calgary Flames, Saprykin never managed to live up to his billing. He tended to be very inconsistent and more than a little unintelligent when he was on the ice: his primary offensive strategy seemed to be "skate fast and shoot from anywhere". He would disappear, offensively, for long stretches and was always useless in his own end. After the cup run, he was packaged with Denis Gauthier and sent to Phoenix for Damond Langkow. While a sentimental favorite thanks to being part of the cup-finalist squad, most Flames fans, upon reflection, were glad to see the back of him.

- Jeremy Roenick. JR had a horrible season last year for the $4 million + LA paid him. Thanks to his advancing age and history of concussions, The Mouth was forced to engage in an earnest PR campaign during the summer in order to raise interest in his services around the league. It was rumored he was coming to Calgary for a short while and I was pretty happy when Roenick settled on Phoenix. Seems like a natural fit to me.

- Steven Reinprecht. Another guy who can't seem to stick despite offensive flair, Rhino was first a King, then a Sabre (for about 2 hours) next an Av and then a Flame and is now a Coyote. Speaking from a Flames persepective, Reinprecht has offensive talent. He also has a penchant for inconsistency and isn't the strongest guy around. Not to mention his injury-prone-ness. That said, Rhino ended the year strong after the trade last season and he managed to produce career numbers. Im still a little miffed about the meagre return Sutter got in this trade (Reinprecht, Sauve for Boucher and Leclerc).

- Georges Laraque. Laraque was cut loose this summer by the Oilers despite being immensely popular with players and fans alike. Edmonton management no doubt recognized that the league is on the fast track to rendering guys like Big Georges obsolete. So what do the Coyotes do? Sign the UFA with virtually zero leverage to a 2 year, $2.2 million contract with the an added no trade clause! That's what!

- Mike Ricci. Aging and beat up, Ricci's game has been on the decline for a few years now. He scored 7 goals and 26 points with the Sharks in 03/04 after which he was released as an UFA by San Jose. 'Course, in swooped the Desert Dogs...

- Derek Morris. Don't get me started on Derek Morris. I hated him when he was in Calgary. I went to games back in the dark ages of the "Young Guns" primarily to taunt him...anyways, Morris is another "highly touted" former Flame's draft-pick that has somehow ended up in Phoenix. Calgary got rid of him as soon as Jordan Leopold showed signs of being an NHL defensemen and then he eventually wore out his welome with his 2nd team, Colorado, as well. He's got some skill, but he's pretty much just a passionless tool. Im convinced he'll end his career somewhere in Germany.

- Curtis Joseph. Maligned for being a play-off loser, Joseph was signed by the Coyotes for a virtual song and dance...mainly because no one else was willing to take a chance on him. He's a 39 year-old former all-star who's never won the Stanely cup...and it looks like he never will. His best days are probably well behind him (and he's their #1 goalie next year).

- Philippe Sauve. Was told to basically take a long walk off a short pier by Sutter last season.

- Nick Boynton. Was drafted by Washington in the first round back in '97. Then he was drafted in the first round again by Boston a year later after the Capitals let him re-enter the draft for some reason. After a couple of salary disputes and some injuries, the Bruins sent Boynton to Phoenix for Paul Mara. I still don't understand this trade from a Coyotes perspective. I guess Mara just wasn't "unwanted" enough?

(For those of you that are especially bored, check out the guy listed directly below Boynton on tsn's player list. Excellent porno alias, no?)

And add to all that Owen Nolan. A 34 year old guy who's played all of 79 NHL games in the last 4 years. He was apparently battling knee-injuries and Toronto Maple Leaf lawyers all of the prior season. Hell, after he failed to sign with a team around the trade deadline in March, I figured he was in line for retirement. Guess not.

I suppose they can just keeping adding them to the pile. Should he flop in the swamp, expect to see Bertuzzi wearing Coyotes silks sometime in the near future. Mike Danton's out of prison? How fast can he get down south? I wonder how long Rico Fata's going to swim against the current? Considering their tendency for accumulating ex-Flames-prospect-turned-crappy-player, it's only a matter of time before we see Rico skating swiftly and stupidly into the boards at either end of the Coyotes rink...

EDIT - How could I forget the Brett Hull fiasco?

Top Seven of the Summer

With summer winding down and fresh NHL news dwindling, I decided to fatten the blog with a "Top Stories o' the offseason ('06 edition)" type-post. The last few weeks nothwithstanding, this has been one of the most interesting and frenetic summers in the league's history. So without further preamble, I present "Top Stories o' the offseason":

1.) The Chris Pronger "Situation"

It's rare that a player will demand a trade only a season after signing a 5 year contract. It's even rarer that the player will do so on the heels of an extended run into the play-offs that saw him become the toast of the town. Of course, what made this story so titillating and therefore such great fodder for the mainstream media and bloggers alike was the total lack of clarity surrounding the thing. Not only did Pronger leave for vacation while charging his agent with the task of delivering the stomach-punch worthy news to the Oilers management, he also later refused to properly identify any of his reasons for demanding the trade in the first place. In the face of this lack of details and apparently inexplicable turn of events, the scandalous minds of the puzzled public went about filling the vaccum. What followed was all assortment of rumors and soap-operatic innuendo: Pronger's wife was unhappy in Edmonton because she's an American blue-blood; because she's isolated from her family; because Pronger had an affair with a local puck-bunny... no, wait, a local news anchor. The whispers piled up and were disseminated by way of messageboard, blog, phone, water-cooler gossip and newspaper. Eventually, though, the lack of any solid evidence (as well as threat of litigation, no doubt) disspersed the playground chatter and Pronger was dealt to the Ducks for Lupul, Smid and bunch of future assets. Now, in the wake of Pronger's "Benedict Arnold" Edmonton fans are left with little more than a gaping hole on their blueline and a debate over what unfavorable moniker will replace "The Orbs of Power".

(Yes, that's Chris Pronger in the image above. No, I don't know what he's doing. Pic found here.)

2.) Wang's World

Not wanting to be out-done by Chris and his wife, the Islander's owner Charles Wang fired his newly minted GM Neil Smith (a month into his new 3 year contract) and hired medicore back-up goaltender Garth Snow as his replacement. I still haven't decided if this is more stupid than weird, but it's certainly a bit of both. To Snow's credit, he wrote an open letter to the unfortunate Islander fans that ackowledged the oddity of the situation. It remains to be seen, however, if he can handle the duties of being a NHL GM just as graciously. One of the ironies of this debacle is that Snow was slated to earn a salary of $750,000 as the Islander's back-up this year...which has now become a cap figure he'll have to work around during the year. My final hope, when it comes to this story, is that the NYI suffer a rash of injuries in the crease in the middle of the season, thereby forcing Snow to once again don his giant pads and become the first GM/player in NHL history (or at least, in recent memory)...

Party on Wang! Party on Garth!

3.) Defensemen and the Free Agent Frenzy

It was truly the Year of the Blueliner when it came to cashing in on Unrestricted Free Agency. Zdeno Chara was the biggest winner (literally and figuratively) - he scored a 5 year, 7.5m/year contract with the Boston Bruins. Jovocop was coaxed to the join Gretzky's Desert Dogs for a mere $32.5 million over 5 years. JFJ followed the trend and scooped up Pavel Kubina for $5m/season and Hal Gill for $2.1m per year. Jay Mckee joined the hapless blues for $4 million a year and Willie Mitchell was enticed to the West Coast for $14million over 4 years. Filip Kuba, Kim Johnsson, Jaroslav Spacek, Ruslan Salei - all scored more than $3million/season for several seasons before the dust settled.

In contrast to the manic spending that greeted the summer's onset, NHL GM's have suddenly become tight-fisted in the off-season's twilight. Recently, Duck's GM Brian Burke
chaffed against the relatively sane figure granted to Vitaly Vishnevski in arbitration, while the previously free spending Bruins have walked away from David Tanabe and his $1.25m arbitration award. Considering the league-wide market was valuing players line Salei and McKee at $3/4 million per season only a few short weeks ago, it's hard to fathom why guys like Tanabe and Vishnevski are left trying to justify contracts below $1.6 million a year. I guess the lesson here is: be part of the feeding frenzy early or you'll be left fighting for scraps.

4.) Trading Bert for Roberto

The Bertuzzi/Vancouver saga mercifully came to a close when sophomore GM Dave Nonis managed to deal Bert+parts for Lungo+parts shortly before the draft. The Deal gives the Canucks their first marquee goalie since...uh...ever...while Keenan managed to claim his coveted surly, gruff-speaking, back-of-head-punching power forward. The move will no doubt benefit both clubs and players - Bertuzzi can leave the Moore incident behind in the oppressive media fish bowl that is Vancouver, while Luongo will finally have the chance to lead a hockey-hungry franchise into the play-offs.

5.) Those Stubborn Russians

It's August 9th and there still remains a divide between the Russian Hockey Federation and the NHL regarding the player transfer deal. According to this article the IIHF-NHL agreement

...sets the financial sums the NHL sends to European federations in player transfers. The IIHF redistributes the money among those national federations and clubs that lose players to the NHL, using a formula decided by the IIHF and national federations.

Im not sure what's the onion in the ointment here - the level of compensation or the nature of the IIHF's "redistribution formula". Given that they seem to quibbling over a $200,000 transfer fee for Malkin, Im guessing it's the former rather than the latter. So much for crushing capitalistic greed, eh Comrade?

The upshot for NHL clubs is an inability to bring over any of their Russian prospects. The most notable, of course, being the Pittsburgh Penguin's Evgeni Malkin, who looks like he'll be spending another winter across the pond (despite the Penguins desperate need for any help they can get). Beyond that, it's probable that almost every club has a Ruskie or two they'd like to re-locate to North America. While it looks like some players, like Edmonton's Alexei Mikhnov, may look for ways around the stalled IIHF deal, Im guessing most teams will have to go without many of their young Russian assets this season.

6.) Leopold in, Tanguay Out

Maybe this isn't really a "Top Story" per se, but it sure was big news for Flames fans. My thoughts on the Tanguay acquisition have been enumerated here and here. In addition, MudCrutch devoted a recent post to Tanguay at his site. One of the more amusing bits of news regarding this trade (from a Calgary perspective) is that Leopold will apparently miss the start of the season due to a hernia operation.

7.) NJ Devils Go Cap Crazy

Looking at the Devil's salary commitments for 06/07 is like witnessing a horrible car accident - oddly, perversely fascinating. Lou Lam has less than 60 days before the start of the season; 60 days to re-sign both Brian Gionta and Paul Martin and he has precisely -($2.495m) worth of cap space to do it. It's going to take a bit of GM wizadry to accomplish that feat, no doubt. So either a big ticket guy like Gomez or Rafalski is shipped out for some cheap prospects or Mogilny and Malakhov suffer sudden and inexplicable season ending injuries during training camp. Welcome to the NHL salary-cap era New Jersey!

Anyways, those are the top 7 (as I see it at least). This summer yielded a plethora of other interesting stories, of course: the Ottawa, San Jose, Chicago three way trade involving Havlat and others. The Rask for Raycroft swap. The baffling continuation of Belfour's career. Hasek's 3rd go-round in Detroit. But I think I got the top 7 covered.

As for the rest of the summer...now that Legace has settled on St. Louis, I guess the only story left is the unrestricted free agency of Anson Carter...*sigh*...the season can't start soon enough.

Friesen: The First Line Controversy

The newest debate raging amongst Flame's fan these days is: who will ride the left side on the #1 line come winter?

Course, the assumption is that both Iginla and Tanguay will be the primary fixtures on the top scoring unit. If you take Sutter's assertion that Tangs will be skating down the middle as a Flaming "C" at face value, then the left-winger to complete the trio becomes the lone unknown.

Considering the Flame's depth on the left side:

Kristian Huselius
Marcus Nilson
Jeff Friesen
(Eric Nystrom?)

the natural choice seems to be Kristian Huselius. He's got top-notch stickhandling and puck-distribution skills and is a great producer on the PP. Personally, however, I would prefer to see Juice on the 2nd unit with Damond Langkow and Chuck Kobasew (both de facto 2nd liners since Tanguay and Iginla are the unquestioned #1 guys at those respective positions). As I recall, Langkow and Juice were perhaps the only forward tandem that developed a modicum of chemistry last season. In addition, it would probably be beneficial to spread out the offensive threats across two lines (can't remember the last time I said that about the Flames) rather than concentrate all the firepower on the top unit. So, basically, Im hoping the Huselius-Tanguay-Iginla line is the first PP unit rather than the #1 even-strength unit.

Marcus Nilson? He's a checking line winger. He'll be killing penalties and playing against other #1 lines all year with Stephane Yelle no doubt. So scratch Nilson.

As for Eric Nystrom, Im not even sure he'll make the team...let alone get time with Tangs and Iginla.

Therefore, as far as natural left-wingers go, Jeff Friesen is the last choice. And considering his rather dreadful season last year, it doesn't seem to be a very savory one. For those uninformed few, Friesen played for the Capitals and the Ducks in 05/06 and only managed to accrue a paltry 11 points in 51 GP. That's a 17 point year had he played the full 82 games. Which is just bad. Really, really bad.

Fortunately, if one were to look at Friesen's career thus far, it's probably reasonable to consider last season an abberation - he's scored 20+ goals and 50+ points five times previously. He was drafted in the first round back '94 with the view of becoming a goal-scorer at the NHL level. So there's obviously some ability there. The question remains whether Friesen is actually a worthy reclamation project or just another failed experiment who is swiftly and inexorably sinking into career-4th-liner obscurity.

With that question in mind, I went about investigating Friesen's even-strength and powerplay production efficiency over the 2 seasons prior to 05/06. I figured by treating his most recent performance as the statistical abortion it appears to be, I may be able to determine his true utility as an offensive player...

In 02/03, Friesen played approximately 1259 total minutes, 1042 of which were ES and 207 were PP minutes. That year with the Devils he scored 43 ESP and 8 PPP. His ESP/60 and PPP/60 stats came out to about 2.48 and 2.32, respectively. While the former is superior to most Flames forwards (from the 05/06 season), it's probably a rather median figure in terms of top 6 forwards in the league. The latter number is pretty much pitiful, considering that Jordan Leopold's most recent ESP/60 stat was 3.25. Ouch.

In 03/04, Friesen's offensive production went down. He played similar minutes (1226 total, 1035 ES and 18 PP) but only produced 26 ESP and 11 PPP. That translates to an ESP/60 stat of approx. 1.51 and a PPP/60 stat of 3.53. While his PP proficiency managed to reach that of, say, a servicable 1st unit defenseman, his even-strength proficiency dived to the level of a 4th liner. Hmm...not good.

I figured I might as well average the numbers over the 2 seasons, so I summed the relevant ice-times and offensive stats and generated an "overall" ESP/60 stat of 1.99 and a PPP/60 figure of 2.89.

So, yeah...crappy. Nothing about these figures says "first-line winger" to me. If anything, Friesen seems to be charted on that course to obscurity I mentioned above. I suppose there are some other factors worth considering here - Friesen was stuck behind Patrik Elias on the depth charts in NJ, which no doubt limited (to a degree) the amount he played with "top-line talent". In addition, the Devils were hardly an offensive force from 02-04. In fact, even though Friesen managed a mere 37 points in 03/04, he actually placed 3rd on the Devils behind Gomez and Elias as far as point-getters were concerned (keep in mind, however, that the drop-off was a fairly significant one: Elias scored 81 points and Gomez 70). In addition, I suppose I could have employed Friesen's career numbers for this investigation, although it's questionable how relevant his 62 point performance in 96/97 would be, at least in terms of trying to predict his performance for the 05/06 season - to this end, his more recent numbers probably have more utility.

Overall, there's a good chance Friesen will get some time on the top line, by virtue of his being a left-winger, but he likely won't do a lot while there if the stats are to be trusted. Were I to guess, I'd predict Friesen will eventually be relegated to 3rd/4th line duty with Amonte and Lundmark.

As far as the #1 line goes...I'd personally prefer to see Lombo gunning down the left-wing with Iginla and Tangs (assuming he'll be re-signed, that is). With the Flame's sudden over-flow of centermen (Tanguay, Langkow, Yelle, Lundmark, Ritchie, Lombardi), converting one of the face-off men to the wing will no doubt be a necessity anyhow. Lombo is fast, an excellent passer and showed some chemistry with Iginla in his rookie season (IIRC). And he's left-handed. If the Flames management (ie Sutter) is serious about developing Lombardi into a offensive forward, I can't think of a better way to accomplish that feat than granting him significant ice-time with the likes of Iginla and Tanguay. While re-invigorating the career of a 30 year-old ex-goal-scorer (who appears to have settled into mediocrity) may be a worthwhile experiment...I'd prefer to bank on developing a future sniper in Lombardi with our potentially potent, first-line assests (Iginla, Tamguay) this coming season.

Where For Art Thou Lombo?

Let's see...

Tanguay signed, Kobasew signed, Huselius signed. Check, check, check. Simon and Donovan let go, Zyuzin acquired. Yelle inked to a couple more years. Everything seems to be in order...

...except the Lombardi situation. WTF is going on there?

It's hard to guess, primarily because there have been precious few details released about the subject. Pretty much all I know is that Lombo didn't accept his qualifying offer. What I *think* that means he is technically a restricted FA - one who is most porbably trying to garner more money from the Flames.

Even with that in mind, it's hard to fathom how this situation has stretched on for so long. Lombo simply doesn't have the statistical leverage to argue for a "financially prohibitive" contract (prohibitive from a club/cap perspective) - he's played 134 NHL games and scored at a rate of 0.41 PPG during that time. Last season, Lombardi managed only 6 goals and 20 assists in 55 games. That's a 39 point season, extrapolated over 82 games. Which is nothing to write home about and hardly worthy of any sort of significant raise.

Perhaps it's the length that is causing the impasse. Because Lombo probably can't argue for anything above $1 million/season, Sutter may be fishing for a longer term contract - say three or four years. Four years at $1 million per would no doubt become a steal should Lombardi actually blossom into a top 6 forward. Course, Lombo's agent knows this and is arguing for the raise + a shorter term contract. Two years max?

I guess the final sticking point could be bonuses/incentives. The agent in question probably realizes that:

1.) His client doesn't have impressive stats and therefore can't demand a big base salary.
2.) The Flames consider him an offensive prospect and hope to develop him into a scoring center.

Therefore, the big money for Matthew may reside in performance incentives. Can't argue for $2 million in base pay? Go for the "$500,000 for 20 goals" and "$750,000 for 60 points" clauses. On the other side of the table, Sutter undoubtedly knows that big performance incentives will drain most of the value on the dollar he'd be gleaning from a player like Lombo: getting "more" for "less" from young, homegrown talent is basically the new way to win in a salary-capped league. Hence the delay. Sutter doesn't want to lock Lombardi in for a few years at a relatively meagre salary figure only to have to pay out "fair value" should he actually perform.

I'm pulling this outta my ass, for anyone who hasn't come to that conclusion already. Hell, maybe all parties concerned went on vacation and agreed to negotiate in August and there's nothing more to it than that. However, going into the off-season I would have assumed Lombardi's to be one of the easier contracts to get negotiated and signed...which leads to the paranoid ramblings above.

Whatever the cause of the delay, I hope he's re-signed soon: $1 million/year, 4 years, (incentives minimal).

Tanguay - To Score or Not to Score

I finally got around to compiling some "basic plus" stats for Tanguay - namely the ESP/60 and PPP/60 numbers. I also managed to dredge up the stats for some of the other Av's forwards last year - mainly to place Tanguay in the context of his teammates.

Anyhoo, here are the results:



Observations:

- Overall, Im fairly pleased with the results. Tanguay played more than 930 minutes of even strength hockey last season and, as you can see, he managed to produce points at a pretty significant clip (3.15 points per 60 minutes). He played the third most (forward) ES minutes on the team (behind Sakic and Laperriere) and still managed to be tops in terms of ESP/60. From a Calgary Flames perspective, this is very good news. As you may or may not know from the previous work I put in, the Flames were nothing short of horrible at ES scoring in 05/06. Calgary's top (high minutes) player, Jarome Iginla, only scored at a rate of 1.80/60 minutes last year: that's barely over half of Tanguay's number! Hell, even Ian Laperriere did better than Jarome! Clearly, the Flames needed some help in this department. While there are probably some team/systemic issues that contributed to Calgary's weak ESP stats, adding the top ESP player from the Avs is still a big step in the right direction.

- The PPP/60 results were a little surprising, largely due to the number Andrew Brunette managed to put up. It's not like he benefitted from a couple of 2nd assists on the occasional PP shift either - Brunette played 310 PP minutes, good for 4th most among forwards. As for Tanguay, he played 354 minutes (2nd behind Sakics 438) and managed to generate about 4.92 points/60 minutes played. Comparison-wise, Tanguay's PPP/60 and PP minutes played stats are almost identical to Damond Langkow's numbers from last season (4.94 PPP/60, 352 minutes). Between the two teams overall, the rookie Marek Svatos managed to score the highest in terms of powerplay efficiency (5.62 PPP/60), while Kristian Huselius came in a close second (5.54 PPP/60). Svatos played about 70 less minutes less than Juice on the PP thanks to his injury shortened season, but it's hard to say whether that would make a huge difference (I have no interest in trying to calculate variance and statistical significance...sorry).

As I mentioned, Im pleased with the results. Tanguay's main strength, ES production, was the Flame's primary area of weakness last season. The challenge, or course, will be to adequately harnass the potential for more ES goals that Tanguay's addition brings. He obviously CAN get the job done, but the question remains WILL HE be able to do it under the relatively "offensively oppressive" Flames system...

Nerding Out...Cont'd

So I kept one of my promises from this recent post and calculated the 05/06 PPP/60 (Power Play Points per 60 minutes) for each Flames player.

Here are the results:

Observations:

- Andrew Ference was surprisingly efficient at producing points with the man advantage. While his number is higher than The Dion's, keep in mind that he only played about 219 PP minutes last season - significantly less than Phaneuf's 436 minutes. In fact, if memory serves, Ference gathered a great deal of his powerplay points feeding Phaneuf passes while Hamrlik was down with injury. That being said, it seems like he should probably be granted some significant PP time next season, with or without Hamrlik in the line-up.

- Kristian Huselius is, apparently, The Man on the powerplay. At least as far as the forwards are concerned (don't want to anger The Dion). He played the third most minutes of any forward on the PP (next to Iginla and Langkow) and still managed to put up a pretty significant number. I think we know who'll be flanking Tanguay and Iginla on the first unit next year. At least, we know who should be.

- Hamrlik was brought in last summer with the hopes he'd be an offensive weapon on the point during the man advantage. Didn't really happen. Even though he was injured a great deal, Hamrlik played on the PP slightly more than Ference (251 minutes vs. 219). but managed to be less efficient at producing points. Hopefully this coming season Hammer can

a.) stay healthy and
b.) produce at a better rate on the PP.

Especially for his $3.5 million. Hell, even Robyn Regehr, he of the "defensive defenseman" persuasion produced at an equivalent rate. For now, I guess I can give Hamrlik the benefit of the doubt and assume his various injuries were impeding his offensive abilities. Although, it would be nice to see Roman's career PPP/60 stat - maybe it's the expectations about Hamrlik's production that are out of line?

- Surprisingly, Langkow was slightly better than Iginla in this department last year. Although, I don't know how much significantly different 4.94 is from 4.21 (keep in mind, Langkow played almost 100 minutes less than Jarome).

- Stephane Yelle: better than Kobasew, Amonte and Lombardi on the PP? Only thanks to a small sample size...he played a mere 60 minutes 5on4 last season. Should Yelle ever get a regular PP shift (he won't), expect that number to go WAY down.

- Jordan Leopold was pretty bad in this department too last year. Course, you already know that.

As useless as this information seems to be (Leopold isn't even a Flame anymore), it might be interesting for comparison purposes once hockey gets going again. With the apparent promise of more offense next season, it'll be worthwhile to examine each player's performance in light of this past year's stats.

Next up...Tanguay, Friesen and Zyuzin ESP and PPP.

Nerding Out

Pursuant to this post over at Battle of Alberta, I figured I'd try my hand at conjuring some "basic plus" stats for Calgary players from the previous regular season.

I decided that my first, trembling step into statistical geekdom would be to do some ESP/60 (even strength points produced per 60 minutes worth of ice-time) . To that end, I went over to nhl.com and simply copied the available ice-time stats into an excel spreadsheet. Observe:

The data was sorted according to total ice-time over the course of the year from most to least (yup, that's Dion Phaneuf leading the team). Also included in the dataset (but outside of the screencapture to the left) was total PP and SH ice-time as well as averaged ES, PP and SH ice-time per game.

Some items of interest before we proceed: Jordan Leopold was 3rd on the team in terms of total ice-time, even though he only played 74 games. While his ESP/60 stat is abysmal (as you will see below), it should be noted that his was a fairly significant loss, defensive-minutes-wise, on the back-end. Let's hope that the Zyuzin can step in and adequately fill that hole next year...

Anyways, back on track. Next, I rounded the total even-strenght ice-time for each player to the nearest minute. While this may skew the results a tiny bit, the degree of error is probably negligible.

After gathering the ice-time info, I transcribed all of the ES, PP and SH point totals for each player into the speadsheet. The final step was to set-up the ol' formula bar to calculate ESP/60 employing the data mentioned.

The results:

The Observations:

- Some players, like Germyn, Giordano, Ritchie and Macdonald were excluded. They didn't play enough minutes nor gather enough points to generate any kind of significant number.

- Lundmark, Leclerc and Lombardi's ESP/60 numbers are somewhat inflated due to (relatively) small sample size. They each played only 437, 514 and 566 ES minutes repsectively. In addition, Mike Leclerc's ESP stat is probably totally irrelevant in terms of production as a Flame: he only played 15 of his 50 games in Calgary silks and produced a mere 5 points in that time. Some encouragement may be gleaned from both Lombardi and Lundmark's decent numbers, though. Especially considering that Lundmark scored 10 points in 12 games with Calgary, despite only averaging about 8-10 minutes per game. It's hard to say how much their numbers would dip if they were consistently given more minutes against harder (say, top 2 defensemen) opposition.

- Chris Simon was actually better at producing at ES than I expected. He didn't get a lot of ice-time, 636 minutes in 72 games, which likely speaks to his utility as an all around player.

- Despite his relatively sub-par season, Jarome was still the top ES producer (for a high minutes player) on the team. I would be interested to see how this compared to other top point-getters across the league (not too favorably I would guess).

- Dion Phanuef was the best ES scoring defenseman, despite getting most of his points on the PP (although his number is still below the likes of Stephane Yelle).

- Shean Donovan and Juice were actually pretty comparable in terms of production at ES. Keep in mind, though, that Huselius had a terrible start to the year in Florida (8 points in 24 GP). In addition, Huselius gathered more than half of his points on the PP (28 of 47).

- As we all knew, Jordan Leopold had a horrendous season, offensively (His PP stats are only marginally better). I expect him to be at least twice as good (0.76 ESP/60) with Colorado next season.

I'll look into doing up some ESP numbers for Tanguay (if I feel like it) in the near future. It'll be interesting to see how he compares - course his ESP production on a team like Colorado will undoubtedly be a little chubby as compared to the Flame's roster. I suppose I could interpret his ESP number in the context of the entire avalanche team...

...*sigh* this is a lot of work.

In the meantime, I may put together some PPP/60 for Flames players from last year. Or... I may just revert to linking to tsn.ca reports and making glib comments. I guess we'll see.

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Chasing Gomez

Time for some (non-erotic) fantasizing...

So everyone knows the New Jersey Devils are in cap trouble. And I mean BIG TIME cap trouble. According to tsn, their current signed roster looks like:

- Elias - 7.5
- Brodeur - 5.2
- Rafalski - 4.2
- Madden - 3.893
- Malakhov - 3.6
- Mogiliny - 3.5
- White - 3
- Langenbrunner - 2.8
- McGillis - 2.2
- Brylin - 1.52
- Matvichuk - 1.368
- Lukowich - 1
- Wiemer - .950
- 5 guys ranging from .836 - .450
-----------------------------------------
Total - $43.93 million

Notable RFA's left to sign: Scott Gomez (30 goals, 80 points last season) and Brian Gionta (48 goals, 90 points last season).

Ouch. I can't fathom how galling it must be for ol' Lou to have those $7 million anchors, Malakhov and Mogilny, dragging down the payroll. Talk about learning a lesson the hard way.

Anyways, I digress. Assuming tsn's numbers are completely correct (which usually they aren't, but let's pretend) what we have here is a team that:

1.) Has (once they re-sign him) a young, skilled center with "Gretzky-like vision" who has to play with "skilled linemates to be effective". And...
2.) A desperate need to dump salary.

Hmmm. Seems like a fit to me. Granted, Gomez has been on Flames fan's wishlists for a long time - his swift skating and passing abilities make him a natural fit to center Iginla. Of course, New Jersey has had little reason to trade him.

Until now.

Already bumping against the cap ceiling, the Devils have approximately $6-7 million/year in potential contracts for RFA's Gomez and Gionta . If not more. Considering the kind of stats both players put up in 05/06, $6 million combined for each is a conservative estimate.

So what is a Lou to do?

He can't get rid of the Mogilny or Malakhov abortions. He's stuck with them. Nor can he trade Brodeur - the Devils don't have another starter waiting in the wings. The lumbering dinosaur of a contract he gave to Elias dissaudes any deals there. And he'd have to get rid of a lot of Wiemers, Brylins and Lukowichs to make any sort of significant dent in the payroll.

Here's my suggestion (ie fantasy):

Trade Rafalski to Edmonton for a much cheaper blueliner (MA Bergeron?) and some prospects/picks. Edmonton has a lot of cap space, a desperate need for a top minute d-man and bunch of "potentials" garnered from the Pronger trade. The move gets him a 14 goal scorer on the blueline, some future assets and frees up more than $3 million in cap space (Rafalski's 4.2 - Bergeron's .969).

Next, sign Gomez to something like a $4 million/year contract and trade him to...wait for it...CALGARY for Mat. Lombardi+prospect/picks. This way, Lou gets back a CHEAP, young, offensive center who can play at the NHL level right away, more future assets and conserves most of the space he created by dumping Rafalski...which, of course, would leave him with enough room to re-sign Gionta at the $3 million/year he'll be asking for. Or near enough, at least. Another minor move - say dealing someone like a Sergei Brylin to Washington for a 3rd rounder - would probably need to happen to make this scenario at all workable. But, hey, it's possible right? Right??

So does this actually work from a Calgary Flames perspective? Let's see...

The acquisition of Gomez would give Calgary a fairly formidable group of top 6 forwards:
Tanguay - Gomez - Iginla
Huselius - Langkow - Kobasew

Drool-inducing, no? Especially for offense-starved Flames fans.

In addition, this kind of move would help de-clutter all the "young potential 2nd/3rd line centers" in the Flame's cupboard. With Langkow, Lundmark and Lombardi already in the NHL and prospects Boyd, Seitsonen, Ryder and the recently signed Russian Olympian Andrei Tarathukin in the system (plus the 4+ centers Calgary drafted this summer), the team is quickly heading towards a big ol' cluster-eff-log-jam down the middle.

As far as cap issues go, a $4 million/year Gomez would probably push the Flames to the limit. The fantasy gets (even more) unlikely at this point without dumping some salary - say a Rhett Warrener or Roman Hamrlik for a draft pick or two.

Probable? No. Sutter loves his defensive depth. I think he literally lies awake in the middle of the night, sweating and anxious, at the thought of having the likes of Mark Giordano patrolling the blueline on a regular basis.

To make the fantasy even more convoluted, I may as well ask if it would be worth giving up a Hamrlik (and Lombardi) for a Gomez. Would it? Would the potential for an injection of 70-80 points and a more diversified offensive attack off-set the effects of having a greater amount of quality shots and chances (and thus, more goals) against?

I can honestly say "yes", with the confidence of man that cheers for a team that has the best goaltender in hockey. Probably above and beyond anyone else in the league, the Flames could stand to take a few more risks, in terms of defensive personnel, without suffering dire consequences. The resualtant equation looks like:

(Kipper in net+Gomez out front+young defenseman on the back-end) - (Lombardi+future assets+Hamrlik) = net gain in goal differential.

By my math at least. Not that I was ever that great at math.

Anyways, that's my fantasy. Knowing that there are tons of GM's looking at the NJ situation and spinning out similar scenario's in their heads pretty much assures that something like this won't actually happen (for Calgary). And, like my earlier Elias musings, I don't really think this has much grounding in reality.

Sure is fun to consider though.