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We're 19.5% through the season, (I'll round it to 20%) and Smith still looks frighteningly bad. His fiery competitiveness that he's known for, I have not seen. He seems defeated and deflated, like he's in his own head too much. Trying way too hard, thinking way too much, too focused on making big, flashy saves to prove us wrong, rather than focusing on just stopping pucks. He looks very tense and uncertain. 5 to 10 times per game, I see him flop over forward, flailing around, throwing his stick, desperately trying to make a save. Many times, that leads to a goal. He puts himself out of position. That's not the loose, confident Smith I'm used to.

I feel for him, I'd imagine it seems like nothing's going right for him right now. Saw a post on Reddit, saying that after this loss to Anaheim in the dressing room Smith was complaining about the defensive effort (he has a point), to which Neal, his good friend, angrily replied: "Make a f*cking save." (He also has a point). That's already the 2nd time Neal's yelled at Smith this season.

Is Smith at fault for every goal that goes in? Absolutely not. The defense needs to cover their men better, put sticks and bodies in the shooting lanes, hit more, block pucks, etc. We also have to clean up our giveaways - A LOT. We had something like 18 giveaways in the first period of the Chicago game. Ridiculous. Every save Smith makes though, he looks like he's fighting it. Every game it seems 1-2 stinkers get past him, and it's THOSE goals that I fault him for.

Props to the team, despite goaltending and defense we're still 2nd in the division with a game in hand on the unlikely 1st place Vancouver. Like you said, Lindholm has been spectacular, quickly one of my favorite players in the league. Definitely worth the trade. Loved Ferland but he's streaky as hell. You can already see that in Carolina, he's gone 4 games straight without a point. Meanwhile Lindholm's had points in at least his last 5 games straight, including a 3pt night vs Chicago. He's generally scored at a strong pace for the entire season thus far. Monahan, Gaudreau, and Gio have been fantastic as well, as expected. Tkachuk is currently on pace for 97 points, basically double his last season totals. That's terrifying, if he keeps that up he could deservedly make $8M, maybe more, and finally break the Giordano ceiling.

I need Smith to wake up quickly, the team in front of him is the best its been in a VERY long time. Would hate to see that go to waste.
 
Fantastic game, was funny watching all the salty Oilers fans after the game calling Tkachuk a plethora of names for not fighting Kassian.
Tkachuk's tied for 1st in team scoring with 21 points, and at the time of that incident he was alone in 1st. Meanwhile Kassian has 1 goal in 17 games, he's a -4, and has 42 PIM. No reason to risk injury of a key guy for a bum like Kassian.

Loved the spirit from the boys this one though, obviously it being Edmonton helps a bit, but we just finished a kinda crappy road trip through California with imo not very much emotion, so it's nice to see everybody emotionally involved again.
Now on to Vegas, hopefully Neal can end his scoring drought against his former team.
 
Really liked the fact that Peters allowed the younger guys some ice time after running up the score so much last night. First line is on a tear! Tkachuk makes a strong case for my blank retro...

I haven't been this excited watching Flames hockey in a long time. Repeat on Friday?
 
Two straight games scoring 5 goals in the first period ... that's a rarity.
I wasn't overly surprised vs Vegas, they haven't been great this year, it was their backup, on the end of a back-to-back, etc. But vs Winnipeg surprised me. Glad to see some secondary scoring get in there, disappointed/amazed to see Neal had no points in any of it.
We're pretty easily the best team in the Pacific right now, we're 7-3-0 in our last 10 while most others, even San Jose, have been inconsistent and sloppy.

Tomorrow's game should be interesting, wonder how Vegas will respond and if we'll be ready for it. In the dying seconds of Monday's game, some Vegas player pushed Hathaway over out of frustration, and Tkachuk told him "we'll see you on Friday." Might be another big physical game.

I made myself a deal at the start of this season, if we make the playoffs, i'll by myself a retro jersey and whatever player had the biggest breakout year gets their name on it. Going to be a very tough choice, I already have a Tkachuk jersey, otherwise he'd be in contention too, but so far it's between Lindholm and Rittich for me.
 
Another big win for the Flames and for Smitty! He could've had a goal this game if the refs weren't so damn quick to blow the whistle for no reason. Oh well, nice to win vs division rivals, even though right now the Kings don't look like they'll contend for anything other than Jack Hughes. We sit comfortably in 1st place right now, 1 point ahead of Anaheim with 2 games in hand, and 3 points ahead of San Jose. We're 2nd in the west and tied for 6th league-wide in scoring, with 88 goals for.

That's 3.4 goals per game average, wayy up from 2.6 GPG last season.
Now, with both goaltenders seemingly playing pretty well, the question becomes who will start the next few? If it was my choice I'd put Smith vs Chicago, should be a bit easier game and help him get more confidence, then go to Rittich vs Columbus.
 
I'm liking this year's version of the Flames. Much more of an attack team, and they look more aggressive on the power play. What do you guys think of Derek Ryan? He has been a surprisingly useful player IMO.
 
Stephen Ave said:
I'm liking this year's version of the Flames. Much more of an attack team, and they look more aggressive on the power play. What do you guys think of Derek Ryan? He has been a surprisingly useful player IMO.
Click to expand...
Totally agree. Substantial difference between this year and last year. Last year, if we got a lead we'd have a hard time keeping it, and if we fell behind we'd have a hard time catching up. This year, we're 5th in 1st period scoring and 1st in 3rd period scoring, showing we can both come out of the gates blazing and finish strongly. This just about sums it up:
Goal differential by game (Last season):
1543894785266.png

Goal differential by game (This season):
1543894870229.png

https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/CGY/2019.html

Aside from the stinky Pittsburgh game, almost all our losses (red bars) have been pretty close, 1-2 goals down at most. Considering a lot of those were empty nets, we're usually only losing by 1 goal. Not getting blown out much this season at all, especially compared to last year. Looking at the wins, (green bars), we're not just squeaking by very often. We're dominating a lot of teams, winning by 3 goals or more pretty frequently. This is a vastly improved team.

I've liked Ryan, I didn't know what to expect when we got him, but he's been good now that I've gotten a chance to watch him. Him and Hanifin are probably the best 2 players on that 2nd PP unit, he's good on PK, and a good bottom 6 player. He's trending for around 30-35pts right now so he won't go smashing any records obviously, but I'm happy we have him. Another player that's kind of surprised me is Hathaway. Yeah, his offense still isn't there and it probably never will be, but MAN is he good at PK. He's worth keeping in the lineup just for that alone.
 
Yeah, I'm liking Ryan too. Seems to be a threat whenever he's got the puck.

The Flames are a different team this year, and it's nice to see them up in the solid plusses with the goal differential....and take away that 9-1 loss and it looks even better. Lindholm has been a great addition, it feels like the first line was the one year with Hudler when the three really clicked.
 
WOW. What a game. I nearly shut my TV off after we got down 1-4, figured I had a better way to spend my time. Thank the lord I kept watching. In a monstrous game goalies and coaches will hate but fans and goalscorers will love, we beat a pretty good team 9-6. Flames now have more 5-goal periods than every other team in the NHL COMBINED, with 4. This team does not die.

I've had speculation in the back of my mind since the season started that this is just a good stretch, that we'll fall back to earth soon and be mediocre again. I'd hate to jinx it, but I'm starting to 100% believe this is us for real.
Feel bad for Rittich tho :( he looked so sad on the bench, their early lead wasn't all his fault, we were really sloppy early on. We have to clean that up, but it's nice to know we seem to be able to outscore lots of our mistakes.
 
Nice win for the good guys. Though I must be bad luck for the Flames. Lately every time I turn on a game the other team scores. Today I turn on the game it's 1-0 Calgary and CBJ tie it up immediately. I watch until it's 4-1 and turn it off.....come back later and turn it on with Calgary up 6-4...just as CBJ scores again. turn it off and check the score well after the game was over to see the winning score. I might never be able to watch a game again this season.

Wow, Calgary is already at 100 goals on the season! Almost half of last year's total, and they are only 28 games in. 3 players in the top 15 points, and 5 in the top 40.
 
Giordano suspended for 2 games for a knee-on-knee hit on Mikko Koivu.

I don't like it. I don't see a deliberate extension of the knee with the intention of injuring Koivu. I see him trying to block that space, and trying to move towards the boards to cut Koivu off from a free zone entry. Giordano's not the kind of guy who'd try to injure someone on purpose.

But if this is suspension-worthy, fine. At the end of the day, it was a knee-on-knee hit. What gets me is that Dumba gets nothing, even though it's essentially the exact same circumstances.

Giordano: Recklessly hits someone, most likely not trying to injure, the person he hits leaves the game with an injury. SUSPEND.
Dumba: Recklessly hits someone, most likely not trying to injure, the person he hits leaves the game with an injury. NOTHING. Not even a hearing.

Lomberg's also out for 1 game and coach Peters is fined $10,000 on a call that I do entirely agree with, although I'm happy Lomberg did what he did there.
We're without Gio for 2 games and Backlund for at least 2, probably more. Gonna be a challenge against the Preds and Oilers in a back to back, but I have faith.
If we win tomorrow, we'll overleap Nashville as the best team in the west.
 
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