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.
