ScorchStack Issue #55 - Trevor Lewis will score a goal and you will have to feel joy
The signings will continue until morale improves
In a fun twist for the preseason, we are actually seeing which beat journalists are in the best shapes of their lives for this upcoming season, on account of so many of them twisting and stretching as much as they possibly can to explain why the unvaccinated holdouts from each team have a really good explanation and why we shouldn’t just make assumptions.
In other news, Scorchstack will be accepting all forfeited wages from those player so we can put a down payment on a studio to begin recording Scorchstack Podcast episode two.
What’s inside?
Tibs lets you know what’s up before training camp even started - all your dreams this season rest with Darryl Sutter, former farmer.
Meanwhile, Nathan says it doesn’t really matter what Sutter does, it’s time to start thinking about post-Treliving life and if the Flames will finally pick a damn lane to be in.
You would be excused if you skipped watching or caring about the rookie camp and instead relied upon our Twitter coverage of that. Floob didn’t even check in on that, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t 100% right in his analysis of rookie camp.
We sent Konnie out wandering Stephen Avenue asking anyone who would talk to us what they wanted to know most about this upcoming season. Being the intrepid reporter that he is, Konnie has now gifted everyone with the answers to the burning questions that everyone was asking him about: What can we expect from Erik Gudbranson and Michael Stone?
Since last issue
Scorchstack #54 came out and we finally published ramz’ lost article and gave it the appropriate amount of fanfare after hyping it up for weeks.
#ScorchstackCoversRookieGameAndElection2021 both saw minor wins for the guys in red.
Elias Lindholm looked very good doing a very bad job in a canoe. Elias if you are reading this please reach out I will teach you how to do a J-stroke and a C-stroke and then we can parlay into the Canadian stroke I promise these are all real things we can learn together.
Darryl Sutter is your saving grace this season
Your source of optimism is a scowling man who never feels joy and prefers 2-1 hockey games, how’s that feel
By tibs (@decayinwtheboys)
There are three weeks until NHL hockey. Everyone’s excited about this.
Unless you’re a Calgary Flames fan, in which case October 12th (technically October 16th) will be the first day of a painful six-month journey that only ends with a very familiar numbness and a 12th overall draft pick.
These feelings aren’t invalid. For what feels like the tenth season in a row, the Flames are going to run it back with the same group whose prime accomplishment is getting to the second round by accident one time and flailing out of the first round every other time. Even worse, it appears they’re doubling down (again) on the “tougher to play against” mantra that has not changed anything any time it’s been tried. You had dreams of Jack Eichel and wound up with Erik Gudbranson. You would take even a pittance and accept Matthew Phillips in a third-line role, but you got Tyler Pitlick instead. At one point this season, Trevor Lewis will score a goal and you will have to feel joy. Boy, that’s grim.
In all of our experiences, this is a bad combination: not touching the underachieving core, tinkering around the edges, signing big and tough players, and an old-school coach will result in not much better than a first-round exit. It’s very easy to make the connection between the Flames loading up on tough, low-talent, seasoned veterans and Flames head coach Darryl Sutter, who does not hide his love for tough, low-talent, seasoned veterans. No one’s forgotten that the later Jarome Iginla years were wasted in the same way either, also the doing of Sutter.
Except that we’ve forgotten one major piece of the equation: Sutter is an extremely good coach who routinely takes these bad-on-paper teams further than what they really should be able to. He did with a Kings team whose third-best player scored 43 points. Three Flames had equal or more points than that last year, and that’s before prorating for 82 games.
You can check the numbers if you really don’t believe me. Adjusted for score and venue, the Flames under Sutter were the third-best corsi for % team and the fourth-best expected goals for % team. It’s comparable to what he was doing nearly a decade ago when he was winning cups. I don’t do much analytics anymore, but I can confirm those numbers are good. Under Sutter, the Flames were doing all the things that generally win you hockey games. If the season had stretched on a little longer, they probably would’ve made the playoffs.
Of course, that perfectly .500 15-15 record renders some of that meaningless. What good are analytics if you don’t win? You can be positive and point out that a midseason coaching change, alleged locker room dramas, injuries to the starting goalie and number one centre, and all the weirdness of the shortened COVID season factored into that record, and that those shouldn’t be an issue heading into this year. Of the nine teams that were above a pretty dominant 54 xGF%, Sutter was the only coach to be below a .600 points percentage (for perspective: that’s 98 points over 82 games). If the Flames can keep up that end of the bargain, the chaos that rules over hockey should eventually work out in their favour even if they didn’t really do anything to improve their roster this offseason.
On that roster note though: yes, Sutter did get Brad Treliving to bring in some stinkers. I’m not going to pretend Pitlick, Gudbranson, Lewis, or some other guy that I’ve blocked out of memory already (I looked it up - Brad Richardson) who play Sutter hockey are going to become the most enviable depth pieces in the league. They’re not going to replace Mark Giordano and they’re not going to put pucks in the net whenever the top six inevitably disappears at some point this season. In fact, they’ll probably land somewhere between “forgettable” and “bad” when the season is over.
Sutter’s going to wear their failures, but I should remind you that his bad taste in personnel has never stopped him before. You can scroll back up to that Kings roster hyperlink and check how many of those players you recognize as actual NHL players, and then see how long their careers lasted after leaving the Kings. I don’t think Sutter has One Weird Trick to make these guys good players, and I don’t even really trust his judgment on them, but again: he is a good coach who gets good results. Over the course of 60 minutes, his teams routinely outshoot their opponents, deny them high-quality chances, and eventually win more games than them. He makes his good players better, and his bad players at least tolerable. It’s oversimplifying, but in the end, what more can you ask a coach to do?
The bet is not as complicated as one might think: do you believe that the coach who is both an analytics superstar and someone with the hardware to back up his seemingly prehistoric hockey philosophy will make chicken salad out of chicken shit for the nth time in his career, or will the season be sunk by a handful of depth players he likes who don’t actually play meaningful minutes?
Let’s not galaxy brain this in either direction. The Flames aren’t going to completely bottom out because Sutter likes some 35+ goon, and they’re not going to all hit career lows next year under his system. They’re also not destined for the cup, Sutter’s not going to turn any of his guys (™) into good players, and they will still be lagging behind some of the powerhouses in the West. But will they be better than you think they will be? Probably, but only probably because they’re still the Flames and they can absolutely underperform again.
Whether the Sutter system works or not, what’s the long-term plan for the Flames?
Unless they miraculously win the Cup, has Brad Treliving hedged his bets out of a job?
by Nathan (@hanoten)
Well, summer has officially ended, and the Flames roster is essentially set. There was no trade for Jack Eichel. Not even a lot of additions to the team really worth talking about really. Sure, Blake Coleman was signed, but much like the Canucks trading for J.T. Miller a few years ago, that’s a move that is best reserved as a finishing touch for contenders and not necessarily a great idea for a team looking to seriously move the needle.
The biggest news is that Mark Giordano now gets to ply his trade in one of the coolest cities in the league, and now I guess Noah Hanifin is the #1 defender? You could argue that Chris Tanev fills that role, or hope that Rasmus Andersson has a resurgent year to claim that title, but this is a notably weaker blueline.
The real story of the summer was the quiet transformation of the bottom half of the roster into a true Darryl Sutter team, Matthew Phillips be damned. Brad Treliving hired Sutter to save his job (ideally also win a Stanley Cup if there’s time for that), and as such he obviously was going to give him the roster structure he wanted. The end of last season post-Sutter hiring was just a large assessment period and Sutter has clearly said, “Yeah, I’ll work with this.” That makes Treliving’s job a lot easier because he knows that he can show he gave his coach the tools to presumably do what he does best (and as Tibs pointed out, Coach Sutter is a shining star in all the ways that GM Sutter was not).
On the surface, it’s easy to gear up for another season of hope and likely growing pains, where this roster is built with the goal of making the playoffs and hoping anything can happen. The Montreal Canadiens made it to the Final last year! The 2012 Kings were Stanley Cup champions as an 8th seed! 2004!!!
First off, last year doesn’t count because it was a COVID year, and the number of beneficial injuries that Montreal’s opponents saw combined with some very good goaltending that covered a lot of flaws. The 2012 Kings were the 8th seed, but also were a team that added an in-his-prime Jeff Carter and had Sutter come in as a coach revitalize a team that was only two points away from winning their division that year because that Pacific Division was also garbage. Also, while he’s a punching bag now, Jonathan Quick was playing the best hockey of his life.
2004 saw two elite athletes drag an entire team to within one goal in a system that worked as designed by Sutter, but it was a magical run fuelled entirely by “Oh my god, is this really happening?” Not a great game plan for long-term success.
The problem is that this really only affected the bottom half of the roster, which we know won’t really be driving the play this season. The real engine of the team is still the same, just with added pressure. It’s emblematic of this cyclical nature every season under Brad Treliving. It’s been an awkward compromise of Treliving more or less presenting the same core to coaches who want to tweak things to their system (as they should) but neither the roster nor the system gets the full level of buy-in for it to succeed. As much as I loathed the Hamilton-Hanifin trade, it was the biggest and fullest commitment to change this team made, and they were promptly rewarded with their best season ever. However, a surprise upset in the first round of the playoffs and the exposure of a racist coach seems to have quashed the reward of that level of commitment.
Now, the team is asking Sutter to make Monahan, Gaudreau, Tkachuk et. al work at their best, while still not giving Sutter more than the tweaks around the fringe. Perhaps Sutter can turn Monahan into the goal-scoring machine of old with some added defensive accountability. We better hope so, because there was never going to be a trade to bring a Kopitar-type player to fit Sutter’s ideal system.
The current roster of the Flames is built around the hopes that a lot of things go right, that Jacob Markström can truly steal an entire playoffs a la Price or Quick or Kiprusoff, and that this happens now because there’s not a lot of top-level replacement help coming in through the pipeline.
The end of the line for Treliving could easily be coming up, and yet still he’s gone just ‘enough-in’ on the Sutter system. It’s hard to see him still standing at the end of it though because there doesn’t really seem to be a plan in place for after Sutter’s contract ends. On the bright side, there are currently only eight players signed after the end of next season and none of them are outright bad, so it’s not like this experiment will linger if it should stink.
For the right here, right now vision, the Pacific division is notably weak, and so there’s a very good chance of completing that Just Make The Playoffs scheme. This team could truly surprise and chug along with 2-1 wins just enough over the season to even be above a wild card spot.
However, for the entire season of watching Erik Gudbranson overcommit to a punishing hit and get caught out of position OR watching Elias Lindholm thrive under Sutter with his most complete season ever (both equally possible, really), there should be a nervous glance cast towards the future with the question of is there a plan for if this doesn’t work out? With only one team out of 32 being able to win the Stanley Cup, there really should be.
Hopefully Treliving’s eventual successor has a better plan than throwing coaches at the core and seeing what sticks, because it’s going to be another long decade of hometown hockey on the books.
With the start of the new season, the Scorchstack content department is gearing up and is also currently seeking new sponsors for this upcoming season. Please inquire within.
Breaking Down The Flames Rookie Camp
Analysis of the thing that sucks that I don't care about and would never watch
by floob (@itlooksreal)
The days are getting shorter out there, and there is a decipherable nip in the air, one we all know intimately, announcing in no uncertain terms that summer is over. Kids, to their own chagrin, are back in school. On the homefront, your sweatpants collection is out in full force. The only people going for a midday swim are complete psychopaths. Depending on where you live, the leaves are changing colours, and either way, they are shaking themselves loose from the branches of their respective trees, twirling down in jovial swishes, sashaying their way to the ground to shrivel up and die. Roadkill, it’s up. Soon, the snow will arrive, as sure as it always does, and everyone will go through the familiar dance on that first day, diligently performing their civic duty by forgetting how to drive.
It’s a garden variety feeling. Autumn is upon us, the last vestige of humanity before we all hunker down for winter, the icy bite signaling Gaia’s final, fatal descent. It’s a pretty great time of the year. Thanksgiving, Halloween, Monday Night Football, and that very brief window for shorts and sweatshirt ensembles all await us in the coming weeks.
September also brings us the usual dizzying array of tune-ups and evaluations that capture the attention of hockey-starved fans eagerly awaiting the opening puck drop on a fresh NHL regular season, the time of year where optimism runs unjustifiably high, and excitement for the months ahead reaches a fevered pitch. To wit, this week saw the return of a regular tradition, the annual Calgary Flames rookie camp, making its way back onto our calendars after a COVID-19-enforced sabbatical, and it’s making everyone ask that one burning question: is hockey back?
The answer, of course, is no. Not even a little bit.
To the untrained eye, these retreats sure seem like professional hockey, but in your heart of hearts, you know what’s up. Rookie camp is the most inconsequential hockey tangentially related to the NHL you will ever see (somehow even more so than the AHL), it is borderline unwatchable, and for about 90% of the players invited to attend, this will be the closest you ever come to seeing their names sewn on the back of that red and gold Flames jersey in any legitimate capacity. This is men’s league with slightly higher production value.
But hey, at least the 10% of players you should pay attention to are getting hurt.
What a great system.
Anyway, now that we’ve sufficiently hyped up this minicamp, let’s dive into the results!
Game 1: Flames 3, Oilers 4
Bragging rights, literally just bragging rights and nothing else were barely on the line to kick off Night 1 of camp. Squaring off were our quasi-heroes in Flames silks, and the not really crosstown rival Edmonton Oilers. Even though the Calgary rookies on two occasions enjoyed a two-goal lead, much like the real Calgary Flames, they squandered the lead twice, unable to lock down the win in an effort that has no actual bearing on the skill of these players in any way.
Walker Duehr, a name you will never have to remember, particularly impressed as the second-line winger — maybe I don’t know, I didn’t watch — scoring the opening notch of the game on presumably some kind of Oilers goaltending prospect. Unfortunately, the Oilers rookies managed to put four pucks past Flames starter Dustin Wolf before the final buzzer, and if you should worry about that kind of result from the team’s best goaltending prospect, by now you should know the answer to that question. No. No, it doesn’t matter at all.
Game 2: Flames 4, Oilers 1
The Flames Empire Strikes Back! Haha, just playing, that’s a little Star Wars joke. I think I changed it just enough so that we don’t get sued. Please don’t do that. We at the Scorchstack are currently seeking new legal representation and I fear we are inadequately prepared for a battle over intellectual property.
On a game that was broadcast for free on the Flames website, because there’s no way you could reasonably charge people money to watch this, the kids adorned in Flaming Cs bounced back from a tough loss, I guess, and had their way with the Oilers rookies in Game 2, deadlocking the series at 1 apiece, with no rubber match to be had, because you know, whatever.
The team was led offensively by Calgary winger Martin Pospíšil, who netted two goals, including a late tally into the empty cage. The big Slovak, going into his third season of pro hockey and thus arguably should be skating circles around these so-called players and really should have had a much bigger showing here when you think about it, dominated on the first line with the aforementioned Walker Duehr (he scored in the first game, in case you already forgot) and center Connor Zary, one of the few players here who matters in the grand scheme of things, at least until he blocked a shot for some reason and injured himself in an exhibition tilt that didn’t need to have any shots blocked.
Hopefully, he’s not injured too long, but at least the team got the win.
The Flames also benefited from a really solid contribution from the de facto 4th line of Lucas Ciona, Rory Kerins, and Cole Huckins, three fine young men who will go on to have standout careers in Canadian collegiate hockey, before going on to become chartered professional accountants in four to six years.
Mitch Love, who apparently was named head coach of the Flames AHL affiliate Stockton Heat earlier this summer (I guess I’ll take your word for that), coached the Flames. This is because no one on the actual coaching staff for the big club has the time or desire to dedicate to running the bench in these games, and he certainly made comments after the game, stating the team addressed areas that were a weakness in Game 1, and that they managed to shake out any nerves they might have been feeling, which is just about the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.
The win was a wonderful way to close out a quick-paced and eventful rookie camp. For Flames fans who are in a bad way for more game action, you are in luck, as up next for the team is training camp and exhibition season, a period of time where even though all the roster spots for the regular season are about 99% accounted for and no exhibition games will ever really put any of that into flux, it’s still an opportunity for fans to witness an agonizingly long stretch of games featuring over the hill minor league stars, and players on professional tryouts who have part-time jobs at autobody shops. Needless to say, it’s a very important stretch to help everyone get tuned up for the 2021-22 NHL season.
What is a realistic expectation for Erik Gudbranson and Michael Stone?
A realistic outlook on the two most recent defensive signings
by Konnie (@konnie49)
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Realistic expectations?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
They suck absolute shit, what do you think?
Up Next Week
Hopefully by this time next week, there are at least three players who have been labelled as being in the best shape of their life and we get to call them liars because anyone who got in shape during COVID is a psychopath.
Theo Fleury takes his best tweets from election season and releases a new spoken word album, which we will obviously be reviewing.
Matthew Tkachuk shares the new antagonization routine he worked on this summer, which involved purchasing 31 empty syringes off and labelling them with each team’s vaccine holdout to scare them in a post-whistle scrum.
We recreate the Great Fire of 1903 to appease Scorch and gain blessings for the upcoming season.