travel_dude

One had surgery, the other on LTIR.

Yeah, I am just watching how the teams play.

Maybe, and you certainly have a right to express it. I'm just not buying into the idea that the Flames follow up a perceived easy game with a stinker because we took them lightly. Ebbs and flows of a season. Schedule nightmares. Travel schedules. No game is guaranteed, and that's the nice thing about the modern NHL. My reasons for pointing this out is there were many things I would call a schedule loss that we gutted out for a win. 15 B2B sets, where some teams had less than 8. 3 games on the road in 4 nights to finish the season on the last night. We laid an egg against Dallas, not that we came off a easy win and didn't take em seriously or bought into the hype. Focus on the wrong stuff and you can do that I guess. The media likes to distract attention away from hockey and turn it into stories. Like Kane's comments. Or the Kassian affair. Or the Doubty stuff. Or the Benn comments.

He gets a standing O when Ottawa next plays in Calgary.

COL does what they do. They win and then a loss sets them back. STL is built like CGY, in some ways. I'm still up in the air about who wins that series or about who I would want to play against. COL for payback? STL, getting by a former cup winner?

Kane can handle himself, but won't engage unless it's cheap shots when the other guy is tied up. He knows he loses those fights against the guys we would send in after him. He can pretend that they will target our guys, but where was that in a blowout game? Exactly. Namestnikov targeted Gaudreau in game 4 and that game was the turning point for the Flames. We win off a Gaudreau breakaway, with the PS being the game winner. Go on to win the next game. You can talk crap all you like, but it ain't scaring the Flames. Expect the same amount of hits on McD.

Typical Kane talking trash through the media and not his play.... Evander Kane, on the Flames being physical with Connor McDavid "If they're going to go after our top guys, we're going to go after their top guys."

That was easy? I thought it was a test that we had to come back out and keep the tempo up. The only thing easy was that EDM was a mess, brought on by the relentless attack. I am just choosing to put previous season in the rear view. This year was never about having an easy game and getting ahead of ourselves. I would suggest that we played the season start to finish the same way. Wasn't always the results we wanted, but 54 games scoring first really says something. Being a road warrior and learning to turn the Dome into a den of horrors. The schedule wasn't kind to us. Plenty of reasons to mail it in. We were never so full of ourselves to come out flat. Just my opinion and I'm not picking on you. Past is past. Dallas may have done some things to change the course of the series, but we were not 100% in the right mind. There was more reasons for fights in the BOA, but we never got sucked into it. We played the game that Dallas wouldn't let us do for 7 games. Go ahead, start something. We are ready. Not even a pushback when it was out of reach.

They played games with the players. We love you, but we like new toys. You are worth big money to us, but we have to now trade you because we want something new. Lets see if we can put one over on the NHL and have a ton over the cap. Oh oh, we need to trade somebody. Trade cancelled. Ooops another guy injured.

We need to consider tonight to be the fight for home ice advantage. Can't be giving it up. Then a split in EDM is easier to swallow. Win the first of the two and put them on the brink. We do that and we have a 3-1 lead going back home. Killer instincts. No moral victories to the Orangemen. Would be good to get that color out of the playoff spectrum. Then it's only primary colors remaining.

Good job. I forgot that part.

I wouldn't read too much into the lines and pairs. Barrie a bit sick so game time decision at worst. Broberg just covering the spot. Same with Shore. Not bothering to skate Draisaitl. They might go 11-7 with Nurse being a bit of a risk, but the worse risk is Draisaitl perhaps. 10F doesn't project well if Draisaitl can't finish. Who knows though. I wouldn't want to be the coach to figure out a response to game 1.

We always seemed to manage with Stone in. But Sutter also pointed to the D fitting into the structure of the system. Communication. Puck moving. Playing as part of a 5 man unit. He was asked about covering a player man on man. Said you can't do that in the rules anymore. Has to be the line out there.

Holy crapola. I suspect that lasts just a couple of shifts. Shore can be dangerous when they focus on McD, but he's less of a threat than Yammer; just a lot bigger. Probably see him double shift with 4th line. Assumin they aren't just using Shore as a placeholder for Drai taking the skate off. It's not a huge advantage having Draisaitl out (and it may be a ploy), but only Drai was winning draws. McD was only 33%. Broberg is a placeholder for Barrie being under the weather.

Evander Kane asked about Milan Lucic: “We welcome him on the ice whenever he is.”

As good as Stone has been as a fill-in, Tanev was the stabilizing force with Kylington. I wouldn't say that they were bad, just that Stone is not quite as mobile, and he seemed to be thinking offense more. Sutter may appreciate the offense, but he has Stone as a role player. Hard to play against. Check hard. Take care of D-zone.

My motto for the Flames for Game 2....

There was some suggestion that Bowness wanted to retire. Go back to the lifestyle of summers off, not getting ready for a new season.

Need more of this in golf to come close to hockey....

Report: Darnell Nurse battling “core-muscle injury that might require offseason surgery”

Still on the Left Coast?

One lesser pick is really all. And it remains to be seen if it's really a bad one. FLA is going to decide a lot of fates here. Who would have thought the league leader possibly getting swept. Right, the Pres trophy curse. The East top seeds in tough. NYR perhaps near the end of their rope against a defensive team. FLA out matched against a bruised cup winner. The West, up in the air. STL looks to have figured out COL.

Yeah, the 4th line caught out there for two goals. One a result of getting hemmed in. Might have been after an icing, not sure. Preventable, but it was the one goal that I thought was going in regardless of Marky's play. McD went 5 hole, but could have roofed it. I think he still rolls 4, but maybe recognizes the way the Oilers roll their lines. Power vs power seemed to work. Backlund shutting McD down seemed to work. He's going to be out there every 2nd shift. Use Lucic against bottom 6 as much as possible.