bosn111

I have been quiet mostly on the boards for awhile as I had little to add to conversations. Fans seem to be more polarized than usual regarding a variety of players. While I am not able, due to location, to watch many games and even less able to keep track of prospects I do have some insight. By all accounts, Nakladal and Wotherspoon have been not only reasonable fill ins, but have also seen increased time on ice and more responsibility while both have stepped up to meet the challenge. Looking at TOI stats, they have played equal to or above what Smid and Engelland were playing prior to the Wideman suspension. They may not be top pairing Dmen, Nakladal MIGHT be able to step in as a mid pair, but they are proving to be solid NHL calibre D. Kulak had a good camp, was a late cut and has had a good season in the AHL from what I hear. The fact that Wotherspoon and Nakladal got called up rather than him is somewhat telling ( unless Kulak is injured). They Flames also have prospects still, in juniors (Kylington and Andersson) who are projected to have at least NHL potential with Kylington possibly being a second pair. Morrison is another prospect with projections of NHL use. While the Flames may not have elite prospects in the system, if you look at Hockeyfutures, the three above are really rated not much below guys like Darnell Nurse in Edmonton. With Giordano, Brodie and Hamilton set as top 4 locks for multiple years, the Flames have time to develop the young guys to step into larger roles. If you have both Spoon and Nak stay with the big club next season and move out other contracts (Wideman if possible, Russell likely in the next fay or two , Smid possibly retirement due to injury, and possibly Engelland), then you free up space in the minors as well for Kylington and Andersson to fill the places in the AHL of Spoon and Nak. Obviously you can't / won't move all 4 of those contracts, but 2 is not far fetched, even 3 could be likely before next season. If the Flames can move out all 4, and get a solid young second pair Dman already with experience then the Flames could be well set for next season. Moving all 4 contracts frees up a ton of cap space. The real question mark on D right now is which contracts can be moved? In a few years, the question is who can replace Giordano? The D is pretty solid right now with Giordano, Brodie, Hamilton, Nakladal, Wotherspoon and Engelland. Is their room for improvement? Certainly. Can that improvement happen through experience for Spoon and Nak? absolutely. Can an upgrade be had on Engelland? Absolutely for thenright price. Will adding 1 more top 4 Dman, better than either Russell, Engelland or Wideman as the only move make the Flames a cup contender? Absolutely not. More needs to be added as well and young guys increasing experience will only help. In my opinion the Flames MUST move on from Russell, Smid and Wideman while keeping Nak and Spoon around, possibly move on from Engelland if the right offer comes along and SHOULD try to get another 2nd pair Dman at reasonable cost even if he is around 30 (move out in a few years when Kylington is ready). Add to that goaltending changes and a couple of changes on the forward lines, and the team could easily be a contender. Kulak could be a good 7th D in the scenario above. I don't know if it can all be done before the start of next season, but it should be the goal. In order to help out the D, especially the young guys, you need to have a goalie that they can be confident in front of and forwards who know how to provide solid defensive support (Backlund, Stajan, Bouma). I know I might take some flak and some may say that these moves are unlikely or even impossible, and I do not deny that it would be difficult at best, but it is what I think the goal should be for Treliving.

D depth to cover for your top 2 D men in the form of prospects is virtually impossible. If you have a top 2 capable D man in the organization and not playing as a top 2, then he is playing a 3-4 role. You will never have a 1-2 ready D man sitting in the minors. Calgary has reasonable D depth for the future, just not quite the top end potential. The Flames will need to hit it big in a draft or in a trade to get more top end D talent which EVERY team is looking for along with top end forwards and goalies. We have plenty of 4-6 depth D in the system, just not top 3.

Looking forward to next season is tough. We really don't know who will or will not be ready to step up on D and whether or not we move players, picks or prospects. Calgary has a luxury that many other teams do not. They can use the term "rebuild" for a couple more seasons in order to justify playing a few young guys in big roles to see if they can handle it. There are a number of Flames prospects pushing for a chance at playing on the Flames later this season or next season. Along with Sieloff and Wotherspoon you can't forget Culkin and Kulak as making pushes. I don't think any of the 4 would be quite ready for consistent top 4 minutes, but it would not be terrible. I like what I am seeing so far. Calgary is currently in the top half of the league for fewest goals against. The D is working well. The question is what to do next year. There is very little in the 26-30 year old range with respect to quality UFA D in the summer. Really you are looking to score big in a trade for a quality young D man to fit top 4 or you need to trade for an RFA like Dougie Hamilton or Adam Larsson. Don't forget that the Flames are close to the cap FLOOR this season, let alone next season. Trading someone like Wideman would take another good sized salary coming back to fill the void. Without a bigger trade,, Calgary will be working with what they have for a while, which is looking pretty good to me at this exact point in time.

There were questions all around for the Flames beginning in the summer. Who would step up on D? Who would score with Camalleri gone? Well the simple fact is that the team is scoring by committee. The Flames are currently scoring at an average of over 2.5 goals per game with being held to only 1 goal twice so far. As for the Flames defence, there are a couple of players really showing their worth. It is interesting that Russell is not getting much focus, even though he is currently a +6. Brodie is definitely stepping up and Wideman is playing well. Gio is Gio. The Flames started fast last year, the same as this year, but then they ran into the injury wall to key players for extended periods with less depth than they have this year. Gio, Wideman, Cammy, Jones, Russell all went down with injuries along with others early on. Calgary has a solid 7th D in Diaz now who could fill in for injuries and a couple of prospects could hold their own now on call ups. Calgary didnt have anyone to really cover for the loss of Cammi. Huds carried the team virtually by himself. This year Colbourne has really gotten going, Johnny Hockey is showing Flashes, Jooris is on the score sheet, May Ray and the list goes on. Even with the once again injured Jones, his play seems to not be missed. There is now far more depth on the team to carry the load, even if some of that depth is simply another year of experience for some players. If the Flames can continue this work ethic and chemistry while avoiding the key player injury bug, they could turn out to be a dark horse towards a playoff push. I don't consider them a cup contender, but they could actually compete for the playoffs. Whether people think that is good or not is a separate question.

All goalies "lose" games for their teams on occasion, it happens. In 28 games (26 starts) this season he has a .294 GAA and an .898 sv%. That is not solid starting goalie numbers, but it is decent Backup numbers. In 20 games, Bryzgalov has a 3.01 GAA and a .908 sv%, not much better than Berra and we can all admit he is an NHL starter. NHL totals he has a 2.57 GAA and 9.13 sv%. Price, Luongo and Fleury are all over 2.33 GAA with both Fleury and Luongo both under .920 sv% and these are veterans with mainly veteran teams in front of them. Berra is just behind Enroth, Pavelec and Nabokov in GAA within the top 60 goalies in the league. He is top 65 in the league in sv% tied with Emery and just behind Backstrom, Brodeur and Nabokov. Take out any player with fewer than 10 games played and Berra moves into the top 60 in sv%. Being right in the mix with NHL caliber goalies, and in fact Starters, I am not sure how you can say he is not an NHL caliber goalie, especially when many of his games were played without Giordano, Cammalleri, Wideman, Russell... basically the higher members of the team. I don't expect him to be Calgary's starter, but he is definitely an NHL caliber backup at worst. In 13 of 28 games he has allowed 2 or fewer goals. Yes he had some NASTY nights, 7 games with 4 or more goals but so do most goalies. I don't think he will be Calgary's star goalie of the future, I really doubt he will be, but he is a good backup for now. Berra's numbers say he is an NHL caliber backup, and his play has been good enough for a backup as well. Those who say he is not NHL caliber are being far too critical and expect him to be a starter which he is not.

Hopefully it was only a minor thing and the 2 days off means he would be ok to dress as backup to fill a bench while Berra plays the last 3 games before the Olympic break. If it is a more serious issue and he can't do that, or it is longer term than after the Olympics, I see a need to bring up a goalie for sure. If Joey Mac has a concussion then it has to be Ortio. This would put O.R. as the starter for the Heat and they would need to sign a tender to an AHL / ECHL type contract to fill the void. I seem to recall that a couple of years ago, the Flames picked up a goalie to play a few AHL games due to injuries as well. For some reason I thought it was the Calgary Dino's goalie but that it was during pre-season. Not entirely sure how rules would work for regular season. I would assume University / college players would not be eligible even on an emergency basis. Most likely looking at signing an un-drafted 20 something recent CHL grad to an AHL tryout contract to fill the bench. Maybe someone else has a better understanding of this sort of thing, but this is what I get out of it all.

My main point about the Oilers was that I would consider LaBarberra and MacDonald as a wash, so unless the injuries to Dubnyk and Bachman are very serious and long term, then I see no interest in Mac from the Oilers.

If you look at the state of goaltending in the league, one of the teams who needs the most help is the Oilers. Issue is that they already have LaBarberra as their backup so Mac would be redundant. Maybe Carolina would prefer him as backup to Bobrovsky instead of McElhinney? Islanders might want a veteran backup over a 23 year old Poulin? Tampa's Lindback is struggling as a backup and has worse numbers than Mac on a better team... maybe they will pick him up. Unless any other team is looking to bolster their AHL team to have a bonafied 3rd string goalie, I don't see any other interest coming from other teams. You are really looking at those 3 teams.... maybe... who might pick him up. Based on losing a spot on the waiver list, the odds don't look good for Mac to be picked up. Just my thoughts.

Ok, first off let's back off the whole emotional, and premonition based, oh my god the sky is and / or will be falling. Also looking at the aspects of goaltending, we the fans see games, the coaching staff sees games and practices. How can we as fans judge coaching decisions which take practices into account as well as games? Is JMac our goalie of the future? no. Is Ramo our goalie of the future? Maybe but that is doubtful. At 27 years of age he will be lucky to see a decade in the NHL. With Berra a year younger and very similar in skill and style to Ramo knocking on the door, and Broissoit, Ortio and Gilles 22 or younger making cases for being the future goalies of the franchise, Ramo will have to be exceptional to stay with the Flames for half of his potential career in the NHL. We lost out on goalies because we did not play them in the NHL? Please name them here and which team they currently play for. Irving is in Europe now. Lalande? Keetley? Spratt? McElhinney (Career Backup / call up at best). Please show me where we ruined a goalie because we did not play them. Irving LOST his spot on the Heat let alone the Flames. He is really the only one we can really say that we MIGHT have ruined by not playing. If goalies do not develop in the AHL then why do so many goalies come out of the AHL? Do you expect them to develop in juniors and then jump right into the NHL? If so, and making them play in the NHL, then Berra, Brossoit and Ortio are all being ruined and will never play in the NHL. While 5 games is a small sample to use in talking about and ranking NHL stats, that is what we are all doing on both sides of this argument. Ramo has not played much and we don't know for sure why not, but the coaching staff obviously has their reasons. JMac has started most of the games in the first 5 but that does not mean he will be the main starter all season. Perhaps Ramo just needs a couple more weeks of practices to be more comfortable with the angles of the smaller ice surface and then he will be the starter. You cannot call him the Flames starting goalie until he actually does have that position. As of right now, he obviously hasn't earned it. This arguing back and forth about goalies who should or should not be in when the Flames have earned at least a point in each of their first 5 games is ridiculous. The coaches are hired to win games and do what they can to try and get the team to play it's best. Does that mean throw a goalie into the deep end and see if he swims? No, it means play the people who you think will win you the game. Sorry if you disagree, but that is professional hockey.