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Jonas Hiller Injury, Mike Cammalleri Comment, & Tattoos Around the Rink

July 22, 2014, 11:07 AM ET [235 Comments]
Colin Dambrauskas
Calgary Flames Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
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For those who missed it, recently acquired Jonas Hiller required a minor surgery after having an appendicitis attack while working out in Switzerland.

For those unfamiliar with what the “attack” means or may entail, it’s nothing serious and Hiller is expected to have a quick recovery. Now I’m no doctor, but reading up on the issue it seems that this generally requires a simple surgery to remove the appendix and there should be no issues carrying forward.

Good news for Calgary Flames fans.

Hiller who signed a two year, $9M deal with Calgary is excited to get the season started and reestablish himself as a number one goalie in the league. The netminder recently made mention that his previous coaching staff didn’t necessarily confide in his abilities against stronger competition, as he often watched from the bench.

“To be able to play at your best, you have to feel like people trust you and people want you there, which I didn’t really feel was the case (in Anaheim), especially in the second half of the season last year,” Hiller said. “It’s always tough to not doubt yourself if the coach doubts you and doesn’t really want to play you against the big teams.”

Considered a veteran goalie, but still quite young at 32, Hiller will be given every opportunity to prove his worth as a starter in the NHL with the Flames alongside Karri Ramo. The duo should get equal chance to take on the lead role, and the competition which is likely to ensue is healthy for any NHL team.

With respect to players getting a “second chance”, so to speak, Mike Cammalleri will be looking forward to playing alongside Jaromir Jagr on the New Jersey Devils roster this upcoming season.

As I often said throughout my blogs, I felt that the Flames would do everything they could to re-sign Cammalleri in order to keep a certain level of competitiveness and leadership on the roster whilst rebuilding. While this remains accurate, it seems as though Mike wanted to take his services elsewhere and wasn’t ultimately interested in playing for a rebuilding franchise.

“We tried, I can honestly say,” Treliving said.

“The credit goes to our ownership. They made a number of significant proposals at varied terms, varied dollar amounts … I can assure our fans that every effort was made to bring Mike back.”

“This is not a situation where we weren’t prepared, where we didn’t offer what I consider significant dollars. In some cases, on an annual basis, it was more than competitive.”

I suppose most fans anticipated that Mike would not rejoin the club given the likely interest which he would receive upon becoming a UFA. At the end of the day, money couldn’t buy Mike’s commitments to the organizations plans, and he decided to try his luck elsewhere.
Good luck to ya just the same, Mike.

Without much else to discuss in terms of Flames related news at the moment, I thought it would be interesting to discuss tattoos around the NHL. I am in the middle of designing my 2nd tattoo so naturally the thought is fresh on my mind.

That said, today’s blog will remain short and light-spirited as I share some tattoos from around the NHL…some good, some “not so good”.

Eddie Lack from the Vancouver Canucks went with his parent’s birthdates between the words “strength” and “love”.


Former Vancouver Canuck Ryan Kesler has an “interesting” tattoo of the Superman logo with a K in place of the S. Above and below the logo are the names of his children.




This one from Cody Eakin I find pretty interesting. Some very nice detail and work put into this art.




Patrick Berglund and “Bulan” which was his childhood nickname.




Mikhail Grabovski with a tattoo of himself…as a young player. Above that is an angel looking over him with the face of his mother.



Paul Bissonnette with his “heart on his sleeve” and “Lord give me strength” tattoos.



And last but not least, Brad Marchand’s 2011 Stanley Cup Champi-a-ns tattoo. Yes, that is correct – the tattoo artist misspelled Champions by replacing the O with an A.



“Let me clear something up,” Marchand said. “After we won, a bunch of us got tattoos here in the dressing room of the [TD] Garden. Mine originally was misspelled. Instead of saying Stanley Cup Champions it said Stanley Cup Champians. I don’t even know how that happened."

“After I got it, I came in the room and someone was like "it says champians … with an a,"...he added. “So I went back and the tattoo guy fixed it after that.”


That’s all for today folks, hope you enjoyed!
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