2010 Calgary Flames
Written by Anthony Moretti - Google +
The management team in Calgary have recently purchased a DeLorean and are set to go back in time with their off-season acquisitions. Alex Tanguay is back in a Flames uniform after spending the last two seasons back East in Montreal and Tampa Bay. He had his best season in Calgary where he posted 81 points in the 2006-07 season. But unfortunately for Calgary the Tanguay of 2006 is not the same as the Tanguay of 2010.
He hasn’t been the same player since sustaining a separated shoulder injury in Montreal and could only earn a spot on the third line in Tampa Bay last season. Next acquisition for Daryl Sutter and company was to try to revive their previous success with Olli Jokinen – oh, wait a minute – that whole experiment was a bust. Jokinen spend a portion of both the 2008 and 2009 seasons with the Flames before management realized that the Jokinen-Iginla connection lacked chemistry and passion and Olli would be sent to join his third team in two years. Now both players enter the mix in hopes that together they can be the real deal. Don’t count on it.
The Calgary Flames had the worst goal production in the entire league last season and allowed the seventh most shots on net while ranking 24th in shots for per game. Although Miikka Kiprusoff is good for stealing a handful of games throughout the regular season, the continuous bombardment that the Flames allow game in and game out surely tires him out in the latter part of the season.
One positive reversing trend is Kiprusoff’s start to the season last year. He is normally known as a bit of a slow starter and struggles to post a winning record early but last season he opened with wins in his first four starts and won seven of his first nine games. He may be able to lead Calgary to the same early success this season as three of their first four games are against teams that sat out the playoffs last season. But that should be where the wall comes up and the continuous struggles start to show for Calgary.
Last season the Flames would often get off to slow starts and found it challenging to come up with come-from-behind wins. They managed only four wins when losing after the first period, but they seemed to be able to hold a lead as they ranked in the top five teams for wins when leading after two periods.
Looking at the Odds: The Calgary Flames are currently offered at 35/1 Odds of winning the Stanley Cup
For the Flames a more realistic goal would be to get back to the post season but I fail to see how their off-season has moved them closer this in any real way.
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