The Calgary Flames are in tough for today’s matinee game against the 25-11-7 Dallas Stars.
Elephant in the room. Calgary tends to need a period or two to get going when they play this early in the day on the road. Their last instance of this was a 3-0 drubbing at the hands of the Washington Capitals on November 25.
Not only did they fail to score, there was almost zero showing of offensive instinct at all. Nazem Kadri and Elias Lindholm were the only two Calgary players that managed to be included in more than one high danger opportunity.
They’ll have their hands full in terms of opposition. The Stars are top ten in most metrics.
Defence? Second best in the league. 2.58 goals against per game.
Offence? 3.40 goals for per game for 8th place.
Powerplay, penalty kill, even faceoff percentage — all top ten in the NHL.
Elite players in each position? Check. Jason Robertson has 58 points in 43 games. Miro Heiskanen is once again capacitating their transition. Jake Oettinger ranks 5th in save percentage among goalies starting 15 or more games. Although, it's Scott Wedgewood starting today.
Today should be a great test for a team coming off an invigorating 4-1 win over the St. Louis Blues.
Projected Lineup — Calgary Flames
Both Pelletier and Mackey are taking warmups. Unclear if either will play.
Dube-Lindholm-Toffoli
Lucic-Kadri-Huberdeau
Mangiapane-Backlund-Coleman
Lewis-Ruzicka-Deuhr
Hanifin-Andersson
Weegar-Tanev
Zadorov-Stone
Vladar
Markstrom
Game time is noon. Broadcast is on NHL Network, Sportsnet, and Bally Sports Southwest.
The Struggles of 2022-2023 Kevin Rooney
This deserves a short preface. Kevin Rooney has a niche in the NHL that we’ll outline below. His game may not be where he wants it to be at the moment, but he has the ability to get it back. We should all be rooting for him to do so. He can make the Calgary Flames a better team.
July 13, 2022, was a bit of a rough day for Flames fans.
The opening day of free agency. Amid a hurricane of speculation regarding the freshly unrestricted Johnny Gaudreau and the questionable loyalty of Matthew Tkachuk. Flames fans hunkered down and refreshed their phones.
"I came to this conclusion of what I wanted to do and go elsewhere probably about a week, week and a half ago, maybe, and kind of just from then, just figuring out where I wanted to go.
-Matthew Tkachuk, July 24, 2022, on ESPN Sportscenter
With roughly 20 million in cap space opening up in the weeks following, you could say expectations were high. Brad Treliving eventually got his big ticket UFA in 31-year-old Nazem Kadri signing a seven times seven deal — day one was more of a Charlie Brown moment for Calgary’s faithful.
That rock came in the form of penalty-killing specialist, Kevin Rooney. The contract was 1.3 million for two seasons.
The signing ended up being a bit of an informal offseason “trade”. The Flames signed Rooney after he departed the Rangers organization. The Rangers signed Ryan Carpenter, who wasn’t re-signed by the Flames after being acquired for a 5th-round pick at the trade deadline.
Neither has flourished in their new roles. They’re both playing in the AHL at the moment. Carpenter has at least found a way to put up offence with the Hartford Wolf Pack — he has nine goals and three assists in 14 games.
Rooney, on the other hand, is really fighting it on the Flames affiliate. Four points in 12 games.
You never get the whole story by just checking the stats. Taking in a game earlier this month shed some light.
January 2 featured a rather uninspired effort from the Calgary Wranglers. The eventual result was a 5-2 loss to an Abbotsford Canucks team featuring Nils Hoglander and Vasily Podkolzin. Mitch McLain had a goal and mixed it up physically. Matthew Phillips made a few nice passes, hit a few posts, and received a couple big hits. Walker Duehr used his speed and size to find open ice. Jakob Pelletier had a goal and made a nuisance of himself.
Kevin Rooney just didn’t seem comfortable that night. Late on a couple of plays, not a sniff of offence, he received what was the biggest hit of the game during the second period.
It might be fair to say he’s not getting a call-up in the near future, but his body of work in the past proves he has the potential to be one of the game’s best penalty killers.
Penalty Killing Specialist
Just last season, he made a huge difference on a team that ultimately reached the Eastern Conference Final. It’s a difficult task to isolate a depth player’s contributions defensively, but we got to see a sample of when he drew out of the Rangers lineup for a stretch mid-season.
The first 54 games, up to March 2nd, of the 21-22 season had the Rangers rolling at an 82.3% penalty kill. On March 3, Rooney was placed on injured reserve. He missed 18 games. The Rangers’ penalty kill dropped almost 5% to 77.4% over that span.
On April 9, Kevin came off injured reserve and the Rangers penalty kill jumped to 90% over the final ten games of the season.
What Now?
It might not be unreasonable to assume whatever injury that had Kevin missing over a month of hockey might be affecting his play. Various sources report it was an upper body injury.
Rooney’s injury history is vague, but very limited. He was day-to-day with the Devils in 2019-20 with an upper body injury. He was out two weeks. In 2021, he missed eight days from the Rangers with something undisclosed. As mentioned above, he missed a little over a month last season with an upper body injury.
His extra cap hit isn’t ideal, but for the foreseeable future, it’s not really significant.
While Rooney is on the Flames, his cap hit is 1.3 million. While buried in the AHL? Almost nothing. $175,000.
A buyout during the summer would do more harm than good. The Flames would take on a cap penalty of $433,334 through each of 23-24 and 24-25.
In other words, it’s best to let Kevin find his stride with head coach Mitch Love and the Wranglers.
Honestly, some time off would likely help as well. If he has a nagging shoulder or back — those need time to heal. If it’s concussions? Perhaps playing out his 2.6 million dollar contract and then finding a less physical Euro league would be best. His money is all guaranteed in this current contract — even if he’s playing in the minors.
Here’s hoping turns the corner soon.
Trevor Neufeld
@Trevor_Neufeld
Stats via naturalstattrick.com, nhl.com, capfriendly.com, and theahl.com.
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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