Take it with a grain of salt, but on an unnamed podcast that sucks that was summarized in an article by aggregator rag DailyHive, Matthew Tkachuk said he wanted to sign an 8-year deal here in the summer of 2019 and the team said no. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but also how the fuck do you not take that at the time? If you don’t sign Neal (always a bad idea), there’s cap space. If you don’t trade Neal for Lucic and instead just buy him out, there’s cap space (and no Lucic). There are so many ways with effort we know Treliving is capable of that this could have worked.
Miss you every day rat king.
What’s inside?
Mike puts it succinctly what we’re all thinking: play better you shits.
As part of our contractual obligations since Twitter voted to promote Krayden into his new role, we have allowed him to write an article this month.
Since last issue
If you need us to tell you, woof.
Floob wrote Big Monday Thing and titled it Uh Oh! and this is not as much fun as the hit ‘90s YTV game show Uh Oh! but it’s still really good all things considered.
Our hopes were extremely high for the Official League x Flames hat collab and instead, this came out. Matches the tone for this week. Only 100 available! For only $44 USD plus another $19 USD for shipping. That’s over $85 CAD! Sheesh.
is it hot in here or is it just this @NHLFlames hat? 🔥 check out our first nhl collab with the calgary #flames. visit [ officialleague.com ] for a chance to purchase. only 100 available. drop closes on 11.15.22.
12 Games In: This team is kind of stinky!
Play better you shits.
by Mike (@mikeFAIL)
I got a lot of gripes lately, some justified, others not so much, but that’s par for the course when it comes to this silly sports team and sports fandom in general. Most of it is rooted in the hope that one day I hope to see this team hoist the Stanley Cup and can remember it. I don’t want to be in a diaper like I was in 1989, and I’d like to have it in my mind before it devolves into a puddle, where I’m ignored in the old folks home rambling incoherently about Mikael Backlund as my aging yet still beautiful wife cries during a game of backgammon about how I used to have my senses.
This team, for all the joy they’ve given me in the last few years - and let me tell you, there have been moments of adulation where it felt better than the best bowel movements I’ve had.
As of late, however, the team has been putting on a two-flushers and it’s hitting a breaking point. None of it is to say it isn’t warranted and for some reason either; and everyone is pointing fingers randomly in hopes of finding a fall guy. The problem isn’t exclusive to one specific aspect. It’s not solely the coach, the general manager, or a player at fault.
The blueline has been eroded to a point where you’re in literal danger of losing games that you can’t make up later in the season. Oliver Kylington (gone; family issue), Michael Stone (not dead but probably maimed), Chris Tanev (body exploded; now Canucks-era Tanev) have led to Nick DeSimone (totally real person not made in a lab at EA Sports for NHL 2006), Connor Mackey (noted 45-year-old prospect once regarded with top-four potential which is not an exaggeration; click the bloody link), and Dennis Gilbert to be playing.
This all has led to catastrophic problems. Even if he’s been better than advertised at times, having Nikita Zadorov play top-four minutes (or more!) is not a recipe for prolonged success. He’s the literal definition of Russian Roulette, no pun intended. Either he goes end to end with the puck, or he does something so catastrophically boneheaded it makes me want to shove my hand in my garbage disposal to numb the mental anguish he inflicts.
Plus Noah Hanifin and Rasmus Andersson have - and how predictably - reverted back to their former selves under Geoff Ward, which includes boneheaded penalties in overtime leading to losses that should simply not happen. All of this paints a relatively rosy picture of the blueline. Hell, even Darryl is sick of it and the narrative of “depth”. Post-game quote after post-game quote about “defensive lapses” or "mistakes”. So when are they going to figure it out?
Probably not anytime soon because a lot of it hedges on players returning to get rid of these EA-Create-a-Players.
Right now it’s patently obvious inability to play in-zone defense, which comes with tenure and NHL-caliber decision-making; it’s breaking out efficiently, something the team can do when healthy, and has; and it’s the ability to hold the blueline in the offensive zone, preventing weird plays from manifesting that inevitably bite them in the ass.
They simply lack the necessary skillsets on their blueline to win hockey games. Whether it’s Kylington’s agility and puck-moving ability; or Tanev’s ability to suppress the opposition; or Stone bombing a puck in a reduced role to play to his strengths; and it’s the consistency that Hanifin - Andersson put together last season as a premier top-pairing. Everything has eroded and the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with fans pissing themselves.
Even trying to formulate a trade makes little to no sense because any “body” that is NHL caliber likely will require some semblance of asset; or their cap hit is far too high, which is a concern for a capped out team like the Flames; or a waiver claim, which will carry a cost because of the cap space that player occupies. All they have is hope.
You hope they can weather this lowest of lows until Tanev and Kylington return. You hope Rasmus Andersson learns not to take penalties in overtime due to his amygdala calcifying over. You hope that Noah Hanifin does literally anything significantly of value while on the ice. All you have is hope at this point because the track record preceding this collection of misfortune should indicate a higher on-ice level of impact the current pieces can offer.
So weather it and hope you come out a little less scathed than you’ve been so far.
The Forwards: I’m simply going to fight all of you. Even Kevin Rooney.
It’s 2022, the year of our lord and savior Mikael Backlund; and the continued existence of Milan Lucic as a regular-roster player is still a thing. Somehow despite the better judgment of society as a whole he puts on that jersey, he skates around the ice, and when he possesses the puck the crowd goes “Looo” in a guttural caveman chant. He’s the last living link to the Neolithic era and that’s impressive because that era ended in 4,500 BC.
Woefully pining about a reality where he is banished to some urine-soaked, sun-baked hellhole in Arizona is not a reality; at least not any longer now that Sean Monahan (now French) was exiled to Montreal with two hips reconstructed in a manner only befitting to Peter Weller in Robocop. Instead, we’re left with the shrieking and haunting narrative of the Flames winning the James Neal for Lucic trade that still permeates this fanbase like a grandmother’s secondhand smoke from a life of anguish and chain-smoking.
No one won, you fools. We’re all suffering because of it and one team bought out their digestive tract parasite because the contract wasn’t buyout proof. The Flames, however, have allocated $5.25M of their salary cap space to a man who commands so much respect from his peers but offers little back in his ability to help the team win.
In a span of games we went from on the fourth line, being relatively ineffective; moved to the second line, largely ineffective besides doing the “me big man me hit” thing he does; back to the fourth line, benched for the bulk of the game; and then still in the lineup but largely ineffective still. Sprinkle in a collection of penalties he shouldn’t take yet whines about, a dash screening your own goalie when you shouldn’t, and you’ve got yourself one useless goon who offers no value in regular play.
Logically this means he should be scratched right? Right?! No, because that’s not something Darryl does often. The calamity of mistakes that Lucic makes on a regularly occurring basis — if it were Adam Ružička (Italian) — would result in his banishment back to the shadow realm. If it were Matthew Phillips — somehow getting called up to the NHL — he would be sent right back to the AHL and waived. We’d never hear from him again. In fact, I’d argue there is a greater chance Darryl feeds him to a pig, slaughters the pig, serves the pig to the team at a team meal, Phillips’ undigested body is still IN the pig, and the team eats the entire pig.
You get the point. It’s the notion and the obvious bias that exists, that these veteran players who can get benched, still have enough rope to hang the team with when they make mistake after mistake. This double standard exists yet it’s widely accepted as an element of nature far out of our control; or something that we can’t explain if it were the Neolithic era of which Lucic originated from and we attribute it to some made-up god as an explanation for the unexplainable.
But this made-up god is Darryl and the fanbase worships him because he represents winning, an era of Calgary Flames hockey that emboldened most of us, created a literal generation of fans, and he came back to save us from Brad Treliving’s stooge Ward.
The only good example is a legitimate change to the lines, again, but in a meaningful way. That means scratching a Lucic, or a Rooney, and that means using fresh blood in that minimal role to see what it does. That means reassessing the existing forward lines in a manner conducive to creating results over a prolonged, sustainable sample size. Additionally: that means Darryl actually committing to some semblance of a helping hand in accelerating new blood into the fold.
Enough has been made about the new guy because everything is fair-weather in hockey. If Jonathan Huberdeau had started hot off the start, the narrative would be “Man, this is wonderful! He’s everything the team needed!” Instead it isn’t and that means the pitchforks come out. It’s cerebrally Gouldian in nature that the minute the wind shifts, a take needs to be manifested to prove - at least in the moment - that you’re right: the team stinks and Huberdeau is a bust already.
Yes, he looks uncomfortable out there at times. Yes, it’s not looking great [checks the Flames’ schedule] 11 games into the year. Yes, that contract sure looks bad 11 games into the season. Yes noted garbage son Matthew Tkachuk looks phenomenal in Florida and yes everyone and Rhett Warrener thinks the Flames [again checks calendar: 12 games into the season] acted too quickly on signing Huberdeau to his lofty contract, but sometimes it takes time to adjust.
I know this is contrary to most voices on Twitter, but waiting and seeing never hurt anyone. You can take a few weeks, or months to form an opinion. It’s hockey. It’s utterly pointless even if it’s a haven for escapism; in the grand scheme of things, it’s utterly pointless to form an opinion on 13% of the regular season when the problems facing this team currently are larger than one player.
It feels like because of the nature of Hockey Twitter, there’s a need to be right all the time. History remembers the bad takes, and the good takes are always brought back up to the surface so an author or someone with the intention of breaking their arm jacking themselves off online looking like a clairvoyant needs to further some point.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to just let things play out over a fair sample size, keep an eye on results, form an opinion once a sufficient amount of games are played, and then share a thought. It’s never hurt anyone, I swear. We can entertain this concept right now:
Is it entirely possible that by game 30 or 35 that Elias Lindholm will look more like his previous self? Whose to say! It’s certainly possible, but a lot of that depends on the decisions like better lines, the health/availability of the entire roster, and a bunch of variables that haven’t happened yet because hockey is at its core incredibly random at times.
Have a little hope, it might make it easier to stomach the shit play — unless it’s another night of Connor Mackey and Nick DeSimone. In that case I’m going to throw myself in front of a snow plow.
This Week In GIFs by Director of Content and Branding Krayden
I know they are called GIFs but I actually call them GIFts because they are like a little present that just never ends
by Director of Content and Branding Krayden
Hi everybody! It’s ya boi Krayden (I always wanted to say that 🤣) and even though the Flames have been on the losing end of some really tough matches, that’s no reason to be a bandwagon fan and stop rooting. If we can’t handle the Flames at their worst, then we don’t deserve them at their best!!!
So here are some of the biggest headlines from this last week Krayden style.
Flames have lost their last six games
But I did get a Big Mac for only $3 using the McDonald’s Canada Game Day Deal
A lot of the defence is injured but I already used the nope don’t like that GIF so here
But one of the new guys had a big fight and it was awesome!!!
I spent $5,000 on Flames 50/50 tickets but I haven’t won yet
Actually I’m in a lot of trouble my dad I won’t get my allowance if I don’t learn my lessons
But me and the Flames are about to win big, then we’re gonna make it rain dollar dollar bills
As always - GO FLAMES GOOOOOO!!!!! (I couldn’t find the GIF of Brian McGrattan saluting the crowd so I had to use this one instead but Jack Black is EPIC so it still counts)
Krayden out
Up Next Week
We design another hat that Flames marketing can steal anyway.
Flames might win a game!
Drew Doughty comes to town so one of us is going to get seats real close and taunt him anyway just so that he feels as home here.