TIME FOR A WIN

As I write this the Flames have overcome a wretched start and tied the Sharks 2-2 in the second period. They had better win this game.

You often hear that the exhibition season does not matter in terms of wins and losses. I would argue that it does not matter in terms of wins. Chicago, for example, had an excellent record in the pre-season last year with 7 wins. However a preseason full of losses does matter. Unfortunately I cannot access any preseason records at the moment but in terms of dressing room atmosphere and fan and media pressure (in hockey markets at least) a string of losses cannot be dismissed as unimportant. I will track the teams that end the preseason with poor records to see if this year's statistics bear out this idea.

I expect at least 3 wins in the last 4 exhibition games so that I do not have to include the Flames in this group.

Review of the Past Month of Flames News

I'm back and happy to be so. I have the second Flames-Florida game on internet radio and several topics from the last month to comment on.

New Uniforms

Bleah! At least they are not as awful as the new Canucks uniforms. Still I'm not thrilled. They are too busy with too many weird stripes. The white socks say 'East German National team circa 1974' to me. I don't like the patches either. They do not really fit the look, especially the bland, wrong-coloured provincial one and they invite parody. At least they did not mess with the Flaming C crest. It would have been annoying to change my blog name so soon after starting it.

(woo-hoo Langkow just scored!)

Russian Defections

I was not sold on Giordiano and saw him as the 8th defenseman. Perhaps his game will improve in the Russian League and this will be a good situation for the Flames long-term. Taratukhin I do not understand his thinking. He had an extremely good chance to make this team and he seems to have thrown it away. I think there must be more to this story somehow. One thing I am certain of is that this tiff with the Russian Federation is the beginnings of a European division of the NHL. It will take some time to evolve but this is the seeds. I will expand on this later when I look at the schedule change issues.

First Exhibition Game

Every loss is a knife to the heart and even in the most meaningless game of the year it bothers me when they play so poorly. It just makes me think that they are still a vulnerable team that has a lot to learn about being winners. I want a Flames team that fills me with confidence despite a loss.

Backup Goalie Battle

I see Curtis McElhinney winning the job. Krahn and Keetley in Quad Cities (talk about bad uniforms) and Lalande in the ECHL. Irving goes back to the WHL and hopefully has a triumphant World Juniors at Christmas. What happens to Krahn after this year I don't know but it will not be in this organization.

That's all I have time for right now but it is nice to be posting again.