Trouble Brewing as Preseason Concludes (Flames)

Flames

Trouble Brewing as Preseason Concludes

By Trevor Neufeld

Oct 7, 2023 • 9:48 pm

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For those who missed Friday night’s exhibition clash between the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks, don’t worry about it. You would have had more fun at your mother-in-law’s Golden Batchelor watch party.

The effort level was sitting at below mediocre for both teams. The Canucks took advantage of a couple of broken plays and some questionable goaltending from Jacob Markstrom to pull ahead 3-1 in the late second period.

The third period was barely watchable. Despite a mere two goal lead, both teams let the tempo fall to near beer league levels. Those that stuck it out we’re victim to a major statement regarding team identity. More on that shortly.

Jumping over to the Edmonton-Seattle game was an experiment in humility. Edmonton pushed a tempo that put Seattle, Vancouver and Calgary to shame on Friday.

There is room to speculate. Calgary played Winnipeg last week. The Jets had several game day roster decisions due to a flu circulating the dressing room. Vancouver also had some players affected by illness including Elias Pettersen, who had missed a game or two prior to Friday.

So, illness. Maybe.

It was also a Friday night and the final preseason game for both teams. The first road game for the full A Squad and four full days off before the start of the season. You can do the math.

Hopefully, there is some reasonable excuse for their play. If Calgary starts the season next Wednesday playing at that pace; they’re finishing in the bottom ten this season.

With that said, we have an eight game sample to evaluate. Let’s examine a few trends as the team played its way into shape.

It’s a-Brewin’ Friday’s game featured the recurrence of a troubling trend. Goaltender Jacob Markstrom allowed a goal on the first shot he faced. Something that happened eight times last season, or in 13.5% of Markstrom’s starts.

Jacob will be the third highest-paid goaltender in the NHL this season with an eight million dollar salary, but his body of work in three starts has been well below replacement quality.

Making saves on three of five high-danger shots actually increased his save percentage in that category to .583. Five goals against on 12 high-danger shots have Markstrom precisely tied with Philidelphia Flyers cap dump, Cal Pettersson, who was waived last Tuesday. Directly above the eight million dollar goalie in HDCF% is Aaron Dell at .600. Dell was released from his professional tryout on Thursday.

Overall, Markstrom sits at #81 on the list for HDSV% among goalies playing 40 minutes or more in the preseason. Backup Daniel Vladar ranks #36 at .850.

There are instances of players seemingly flipping a switch to start the season. Can Markstrom pull it off this season?

If he can’t, the situation then becomes:

How many points in the standings are we willing to concede trying to get this asset back on track?

Calgary missed the playoffs last season by three points last season.

The Blue Line A silver lining of the 3-1 loss last night was the play of Rasmus Andersson, MacKenzie Weegar, Chris Tanev and Noah Hanifin. All four looked solid.

The other pairing?

Remember that goal on the first shot? Both Nikita Zadorov and Jordan Oesterle pinched to the high-right corner leaving zero defensemen in the slot or anywhere near the puck. Oesterle is #82 and Zadorov #16 in the video.

It’s a situation of “You might be able to have one, but you can’t have both.…

Zadorov and Oesterle both like to pinch and take risks defending.

You might be able to have one on the third pairing, but you can’t have both.

Markstrom looks to be getting back to allowing a goal in the first five shots. Head coach Ryan Huska also appears to want to run a risk-taking, mistake-prone third pairing.

You might be able to have one causing a low quality goal against per game, but you can’t have both.

Well you can, but you’re goals against average will be horrible and you’ll probably miss the playoffs.

Which leads us to a third point.

The System is Hard to Nail Down Ryan Huska preached a more positive approach for this season. More risk-taking, less fear of losing, more fun.

The on-ice product is simply odd so far. 10-0 blowout aside, the team isn’t creating much space with creativity. Transition play seems to be getting worse as the regular season approaches. The same goes for zone entries and powerplay efficiency. Last night the Flames recorded zero shots on their first man advantage.

In bringing in Offensive Coordinator, Marc Savard, it sounded like the team would be implementing a playbook of cutting edge zone entries and transition plays. As we saw last night, we’re not going to see anything close to free flowing hockey if players can’t skate enough to build separation from the opposition.

It’s a work in progress, but on Friday, October 7th, 2023, the team identity was one of a group too collectively slow to outpace the opposition and simply lacking the originality to execute anything the opposition isn’t expecting. Here’s looking forward to some progress.

Huska had this to say about team identity in an interview with Pat Steinberg on September 16:

Steinberg: “Now that you’ve had some time to really flesh it out, what goes into the vision of how you want the group to play?…

Huska: “I think there’s a style of game that our team is gonna need to play to have success and that’s one where the players play for each other if that makes sense. Not just with each other, so there has to be a commitment from each of our players to make sure they’re doing what they have to do to set the other person beside them in the room to have success…

Good Luck You can call Craig Conroy “Walter White… heading into this season as he is missing an element or two. The 3-1 loss to the Canucks pointed out a glaring deficiency.

And what do you know? What happened in the dying seconds of the game? 62479-E66-4260-48-A3-BF5-E-9-C591-C080-AB3 He gets hit again. A massive center ice bodycheck courtesy of Dakota Joshua.

The response? 851-CF01-B-A814-4-CF5-B54-F-77317-DC355-D6 All four other Flames skaters just coast into the offensive zone pretending to still care about getting the puck. Zero pushback. Not one word against a divisional rival.

It’s not like Craig Walter White Conroy isn’t aware. Established hard-nosed defender, Radko Gudas, confirmed that Calgary made a push to sign him as an unrestricted free agent this summer.

As of today, Dennis Gilbert is the only notable physical presence on the team that could provide a serious deterrent to running Calgary players. That’s only if room is made for him in the lineup.

Trevor Neufeld

@Trevor_Neufeld

Stats via eliteprosoects.com and naturalstattrick.com.

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