Plenty to talk about, so let’s get to it.
There has been a certain feeling to watching the now 37-16-7 Calgary Flames play bottom ten teams this season. While the play does loosen up at times, at any point this season have you watched game like last night’s 6-3 win over the New Jersey Devils and felt a sense of impending disappointment?
Very different season the Calgary Flames are having in 21-22 in that regard.
Games like last night or the 2-1 win over the Kraken or the 4-2 win over the Coyotes make you feel like you’re watching the Harlem Globetrotters. Sure, there is some presence of the other team, but you never really feel worried the Flames are going to end the night with a loss.
Sutter’s sticky situation Say you’re Darryl Sutter. Who exits the lineup now that Calle Jarnkrok has been acquired?
Brett Ritchie and Dillon Dube were certainly feeling some hot air on the back of their necks yesterday. Both brought a sublime effort in the win. Both potted goals. Dube was deemed first star of the game by the media and his intangibles were back to 19-20 form. More impressive than the goal was his performance in corner battles.
Dube was also much better in the dot compared to his struggles against Nathan MacKinnon and the Colorado Avalanche. He his faceoff win rate was 50% or higher against all four Devils centers. While one could argue the Avalanche are a better team; they also rank 31st in faceoffs over the season. Clearly Dillon did some work in his days off.
Ritchie threw a few nice hits as well.
If you’re Darryl, you have a tough decision between two players.
The easy one would be giving Trevor Lewis a few nights off. He’s a veteran, has been a 13th forward before and won’t let it affect his game.
Unfortunately, he looked better than Sean Monahan last night.
Ruzicka deserves to be in the lineup too and Darryl pointed out that he doesn’t see it as beneficial to put Adam on the fourth line. He would rather send him to Stockton if that’s the only option for the 22 year old Slovak pivot.
Ruzicka has performed better than Sean Monahan as well.
Darryl Sutter preaches a meritocracy and that it’s a competition for the abundance of players to stay in the lineup. When do those sentiments start applying to the former 1st line center?
Or in Darryl’s terminology: How much rope does Sean have left?
Here are some lines worth picturing:
Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk Mangiapane-Ruzicka-Toffoli Coleman-Backlund-Jarnkrok Lucic-Dube-Ritchie
Seems much more ideal, no?
Or, what if Darryl were to pump Dillon Dube’s tires a bit after a strong performance?
Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk Mangiapane-Dube-Toffoli Coleman-Backlund-Jarnkrok Lucic-Richardson-Ritchie
Would anyone oppose this forward configuration against the Sabres tomorrow?
Perhaps it is best to gorilla glue together a 4th line that scored three goals in one game. That kind of secondary scoring is completely foreign to Flames fans of the last three decades. One can’t help but hope that Dube keeps building on last night’s game. We’ve all seen how good he can be.
Questioning Ruff Lindy Ruff has learned more about hockey in a year than I will ever know. And he’s probably repeated that process over fourty times since being drafted in 1979.
That said, he shouldn’t have started Daws yesterday. That game belonged to Jon Gillies.
It would have been the perfect redemption arc for the Flames castaway. There is zero doubt the final score looks completely different with Jon starting.
Instead, the Devils pull Daws two nights in a row. Gillies gets thrown in without a warmup, allows a goal on the first shot, then finds his rhythm.
Part of the fun of being a hockey coach is pressing the right buttons at the right time. Lindy whiffed on that one.
Much like his former Stockton Heat teammate Dillon Dube, let’s hope Jon Gillies keeps building on a strong performance last night.
Market precedent for retention That 2024 7th round pick involved in the Jarnkrok trade may have more implications than you think.
Elliotte Friedman pointed out in his 32 Thoughts column yesterday afternoon that the Jarnkrok trade was based around the Viktor Arvidsson trade as well as the Mattias Janmark trade. Both were acquired for a 2nd and a 3rd round pick.
Then he drops a pretty loaded sentence.
Last season, precedent for retention was set in the David Savard three-way trade. Albeit in a shady way.
Detroit received a 4th round pick for receiving and immediately trading Savard’s short term cap hit. The result was that Lightning GM Julien BriseBois got Savard at 25% of his cap hit.
We haven’t seen any double retention trades this season. Perhaps it left a bad taste in several General Manager’s mouths seeing a former Lightning GM help out a current Lightning GM like that. Perhaps other GMs also didn’t like the idea of throwing a 4th into every big deadline deal because again — these guys follow precedent.
One has to wonder if Seattle GM Ron Francis set the price for retention this season at a far future 7th round pick. Obviously, retention is starting to move towards a courtesy. It will be interesting to see if any more 7ths are moved by the trade deadline on Monday.
The Flames are back at it tomorrow against the Buffalo Sabres at 7pm mst. Buffalo has near single-handedly caused a goalie controversy in Toronto. Rookie center Peyton Krebs, part of the return for Eichel, has three goals in his last five games. Fun team to watch right now.
@Trevor_Neufeld