travel_dude

Wake me up when the game is over. Too many Flames are slumping right now. Kadri, Toffoli, Pelletier, Dube, Mangiapane. Supposed to be the most important games of the year. Guess the Dube experiment didn't work and set him back. Pelletier is looking good, just not scoring.

Wow, we are giving up odd man rushes like they are on sale.

Whenever I hear Troy Stetcher, I think of the Nucks terrible defense. He's actually not bad. Not better than say Valimaki.

It's weird. Like if we win the lotto and end up 4th, there is automatically a redraw. Because it's impossible for us to improve our position.

This has to be some of the ugliest hockey I have watched in some time. Almost like Arizona id trying to just kill plays, not score. Maybe the ice is bad, since it looks like bad bounces or board defelction. DO we play down to the level of the team?

Marky was looking good, but he seems a bit off after the 1st goal.

That rookie has better hands than most (or all) of the Flames F.

How is it we allowed two breakaways. Good thing it was Ritchie and a guy that hasn't scored this year.

I think they should go with 4D for a shift, with Lucic.

Oh wonderful, a former backup goalie.

Top line of Yotes has Ritchie.

So much for the lead.

Early observations: Top PP unit didn't look good. 2nd unit better. Lucic line out for the end of the PP. Stays out for next shift after whistle. Ugg

Can't see your video, Conundrumed. Anyway, there is some suggestion Ruzie is in for Lewis. Daily Faceoff suggest so.

So your conclusion is we win the draft lotto, but are 14th before. Talk about dumb bad luck. The old days of the 3 lotto changes is long gone too. What I don't get is how MTL ends up 1st when they are not close to last place now. How did they move up 4? I thought we had one winner.

Okay, so swap Draisaitl with Marner. Leave out Draisaitl, and McDavid's numbers drop to high-normal. Give Matthews a 2nd C, and maybe he gets those crazy numbers. I do think that Matthews in ARI changes everything. They got Strome. At that time, they could have gone a different direction. Strome was a dud.

Dustin Wolf currently leads all @TheAHL goaltenders in following categories: - Wins (35) - Shutouts (5) - GAA (2.22) - Sv% (0.928) - Games (47) - Minutes-played (2761:31) - Shots faced (1,426)

Start one up if you like. I have my dark days. I am loathe to suggest how we do in this year's playoffs. Seeding matters. Injuries at the wrong time matter. We came close to facing NAS last year and a weird flip of the coin and we get Dallas. Would we be as bad in round 2 facing NAS in round 1? Doubt it. I can probably come up with a few teams we could beat in round 1 this year. Doubt we face them. Even if we do, we get Vegas in round 2. Sucker bet. Never beat them in Vegas and we play as many as 4 there. The simple facts are we need Markstrom to win another 13 games to get to the playoffs. Him doing that implies he is flawless and can face the playoff teams. Him playing that many suggests he will be burned out completely. Sutter is not going to use Vladar if we have a chance left, which is why I said the above. I used to be of the belief that you play to game 82 and let the chips fall. But we have been great at winning or losing the exact wrong games and the chips roll off the table. We win a play-in series in a year we didn't make the main 16 team list. We end up at 19th and WPG at 10th. Too lazy to figure out whether it impacts NY winning the lotto.

My preference is to just continue to be the team we were all season long. We don't deserve the playoffs based on the season results. I don't care if we had bad luck, hit the posts or whatever. We had bad goaltending, bad coaching, bad lines, bad games, and bad shooting. If they continue the final 15 games the way we played the first 67, we end up with 87-89 points. Most recently, we had 6 games in March and got 6 points. 11 games in February and got 12 points.

I wasn't exactly being positive. According to odds-makers (who do this for money), we have a 27.4% chance of making the playoffs, while NAS has 15.2%. Our better odds are likely counted on strength of schedule. NAS faces more playoff bound teams than we do. Okay odds is not good. Just Okay. But I went on to say even good odds don't factor in the coach or the players. Win then lose. Win, win, lose takes it's toll. The players are not going to give up after losing a game to Vegas or Dallas. Lose to ARI, then go into a barn we have never won in? Anyway, we have better odds of making the playoffs than getting 1st overall right now. I've given up on the former and hope for the latter. I get really annoyed that they played hard in a B2B set and then lose to ANA at home. Big deal, we beat Ottawa after they lost to VAN.

20/20 hindsight. What impact did Sutter have on these two? No idea. When faced with a choice of trading a devalued Gaudreau after a ho-hum season, locking him up over value, and waiting for the right time to sign him, BT chose the latter. Did he even have the ability to trade the fan fave Gaudreau. Owners saw seat sales go through the roof, compared to a re-building team. Tkachuk was likely just biding his time to see how much he could get elsewhere. We don't know how much Tkachuk liked or hated playing under Sutter. Paul M. may be no better to play for, but hey he sees bikinis all day long. Drives to work in a golf cart. I will more fault BT for the other things he did that weren't related to the owners or the coach. After Burkie left. Trading Fox way before he was included in the Dougie trade. Getting a haul from NY for him. I doubt they pay that much since they could just wait it out. Neal signing. Brouwer signing. Both are predicated on the belief we are a playoff team needing certain things. Again, where did that decision come from. I never like trading a 1st. We struggle to win those trades. The Elliott trade was bad too, and the Smith trade.

What Tkachuk says should only be taken with a grain of salt. One day he says he longed to play in FLA due to the lifestyle. Then he says he wanted to be long term here. He negotiated a contract where he would be in full control to define his future. All he had to do was sign the QO. He didn't so that he could be traded to his one team. Tkachuk family tactics are well known. I neither believe what he says nor blame him for being a jerk.

It will come closer to the arena being built. Ask EDM and PITTS. If we were so fortunate to get Bedard, we would re-sign Lucic and play him on the 4th line together. Or we would keep him in the CHL until he was old enough to play in the AHL. As somebody once said, scoring in junior and AHL is not the NHL. If we were fortunate enough to land Bedard, then we immediately need to can the entire coaching staff. Successful coaches are let go all the time. One that had a single year of success bookended by failure doesn't get a pass. I don't see Sutter as a builder, just a win now, prospects don't factor into the cup type.

If it was just going to be $3M for 3 years, I doubt many would have an issue. Lindholm is younger and will comand more. Dube hasn't put it together yet to get Mangiapane money, though maybe he is worth the same. Next year's cap is going to be difficult to navigate. Not enough to keep everyone already signed. We can choose to make trades while players have value. Hanifin, Backlund, Lindholm, Toffoli, Tanev, Zadorov and Kylington have a year remaining. At least one of the first 5 have to go just to have money to fill the team. Even if all it is is prospects. Players with one year remaining will have value at TDL, but possibly in the summer. Teams are building then and have to make the same tough choices as us. Just letting go the pending UFA's doesn't make us any worse. Maybe slightly better for addition by subtraction. But that is 18 players left and $1.3M left to fill the void. One of the worst times to make a GM change. Maybe a better time to make a coaching change. At least you might be able to identify the plan to get better, not we'll see.