ScorchStack Issue #59 - Can they play defense? Absolutely not. Does it matter? Absolutely fucking not.
You would think for swearing in the headline that things are going much worse
Calgary Flames hockey is back, and they’re off to a slow start? Nature truly is healing. Thankfully, they have a nice five-game road trip where, as of publication, only one of the teams has a regulation loss. Some hearts are going to be broken, that’s for sure.
What’s inside?
We want to know who you think is the hottest Flame, since we couldn’t agree on it last issue. Do your own research, we don’t care about the process, but give us that definitive vote.
Floob has some bold ideas about the third line and has threatened to never shut up about them.
Sample sizes be damned, Nathan shares some thoughts on how the first week went because that is ostensibly the point of being a hockey newsletter.
Since last issue
ScorchStack Issue #58 was released with the aforementioned player previews where we debated how hot they were and also you know hockey stuff.
The Flames went 0-1-1 but they didn’t look horrible doing it so trust the process or whatever.
Overtime 2 was launched to rave reviews on Twitter, and folks just can’t get enough of such hard-hitting stories like “Vin Diesel should be given a chance to coach the Flames” and “Let’s build a skincare routine for Connor McDavid since he clearly won’t.”
The Third Line Experiment You Will Never Hear Me Shut Up About
If you take away my voice, I will start drawing pictures
by Floob (@itlooksreal)
Through the first three games of this fresh 2021-22 NHL season, the Edmonton Oilers have gone undefeated, scoring 14 goals over that span. This, while trading away one of their best defensemen in the offseason, in service of keeping the bad defensemen they already had, signing new and exciting bad defensemen, and literal Mike Smith in net. Sure, the Oilers play in a weak division, but early on they are demonstrating that if you have the right pieces offensively, you can score enough goals to paper over your lack of defense, bottom-six depth, and a surplus of Mike Smith and still be successful.
The Calgary Flames are on their way to discovering this phenomenon for themselves. While the team has yet to acquire Buffalo Sabres phenom Jack Eichel - it seems that inevitability might still be a week or two away - the Flaming C opted to shore up their bottom-six this summer by loading up on players that can only kinda play defense and seemingly excel at getting hurt. They’re still scoring goals — Elias Lindholm is off to an early surge — and it seems like the top-six has enough firepower to sustain that trend, but until Eichel gets here, there is no Connor McDavid pacing the Flames. The team will have to make up the difference in the aggregate.
How do you manufacture goals when you only have (maybe) two decent offensive lines? That’s simple: you create a third one. The Flames could put together a new unit today that I’ve been thinking about for weeks. I want Darryl Sutter to stop being Darryl Sutter for just long enough to ice Dillon Dube, Sean Monahan, and Matthew Phillips on the third line, and use them in the most sheltered offensive minutes you could possibly give them. Can they play defense? Absolutely not. Does it matter? Absolutely fucking not. All we’re looking for here are cheap goals from players who don’t need to think about anything else (admittedly, I don’t know how to get past the Sutter element here, but let me work on that).
Individually, each player on the line makes sense to park there. Monahan, at centre, is an obvious one. He’s very well established at this point as a one-dimensional player, a goal scorer, and one that doesn’t particularly drive play north on his own. He’s been hampered by injuries and corresponding surgeries over the past few seasons, which has hurt his offensive output, but there’s no question that if you can get him the puck, he knows how to bury it. Soft minutes in primarily the offensive zone whenever you can get it might be what it takes to rekindle that form. I’m not saying it’s going to be the return of a 30-goal Sean Monahan, but you would hope for a marked improvement over the past couple of seasons and his current downward trend.
Dillon Dube is in similar territory. He was a very reliable forward in 2019 and may have been the best player for the Flames in the 2020 playoffs. The former second-round pick had left fans salivating for what he was going to bring in 2021, but Dube took a massive step back instead. Dube, like Monahan, is not known for his defensive game, which, again, is fine, as the idea is to not give this line many defensive assignments. They have the players for that. I know the team seems committed early on to play Dube and Andrew Mangiapane together, and it looks PRETTY GOOD, but Mangiapane should be played in the highest leverage role you can give him at this point, and like Monahan, this is an assignment that could kickstart Dube’s offensive gains.
The wildcard here is Phillips. He’s not even on the team right now, but he is a Mangiapane-type player and was the best player on the Stockton Heat last season. Phillips has more offensive punch than basically any current bottom-six option not named Mikael Backlund. Furthermore, he’s a strong playmaker, and capable of making some pretty stunning passes to players in scoring positions (AKA the thing Sean Monahan is good at). Yes, he is small, he is extremely small, and no matter what kind of role you assign to a player, a Darryl Sutter-coached team will always have to have players buy into strong checking in both ends and some kind of indication that they are playing their hardest. You’re going to have to trust me on this one, having watched Phillips play against a bunch of corn-fed Prairie farmboys for three seasons as a member of the Victoria Royals, I can assure you the size won’t be an issue, and neither is the work ethic. I truly believe he could be the mini straw that stirs an otherwise very large drink.
By now you’ve noticed the secret byproduct of this new arrangement: a second line of Blake Coleman, Mikael Backlund, and Andrew Mangiapane, and I don’t need to tell you that we don’t need a full article to explain why that’s awesome. Of course, you’re stuck with a 4th line of...whatever is left, but who cares, they’re all the same thing and they only need to play like six minutes a game whenever Cody Ceci and Duncan Keith are on the ice.
Of course, all of this is moot once Jack Eichel is the new top-line center on this team and probably all three of these guys are in Buffalo, but by that point none of this matters.
(Please don’t send Matthew Phillips to Buffalo)
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Early Takeaways from the first two games
Sample size? Never heard of it
by Nathan (@hanoten)
Well, it’s been two games into the 2021-2022 and the Flames are winless. Time to pack it in.
Actually, on the whole, the games have been very watchable, all things considered. Yeah, the season opener got away from them thanks to some very bad penalties, but also the season opener is cursed so what does it matter? The team looked fairly decent at even strength, and when you consider the roster assembly for both teams, that’s a very good indicator of the Sutter System.
As for the Anaheim game, the Flames in classic fashion snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. John Gibson was sharp in facing 43 shots and stopped 41 of them, but perhaps not enough of them looking to be particularly great scoring chances. Still, with the amount of zone time the Flames had, it’s much easier to go from good chances to great chances as opposed to no chances to any chances, and you have to imagine that Sutter is continually going to harp on the defensive miscues that were evident in the second and third goals against.
So without diving too deep into what two games against a suspected contender and lottery option mean, how have the Flames looked after two games? Glad you asked.
Andrew Mangiapane has come to play this season, to the surprise of no one after his continued ascent with the added bonus of what he did at the Worlds. His chemistry with Dillon Dubé has been a treat to watch on the penalty kill, and they’ve been able to make the most with Sean Monahan.
Blake Coleman endeared himself immediately to fans after scoring on a partial breakaway in his first game. You have to imagine that he didn’t expect to start the season with Mikael Backlund and Milan Lucic after signing a big contract. However, he’s taking it in stride, unlike another recent big agent signing who had a full season equivalent of a temper tantrum before getting traded.
Brett Ritchie continues to thrive under Darryl Sutter hockey, at least relative to Ritchie’s play otherwise. He’s a great option as long as no one starts projecting bigger things from him and makes the mistake of playing him in the top six.
In contract years, both Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau seem very engaged and ready to put last year behind them. The sheer brilliance of Tkachuk realizing it’s better if he’s in the penalty box over Backlund by taking the bench penalty shows he’s always five steps ahead. Sure, they got scored on anyway, but that’s a worthy gamble. My biggest gripe with them and Elias Lindholm so far is they’ve really controlled play, but have yet to put multiple serious scoring chances together per game. Once they start finishing, hoooo boy.
The defence…..is figuring stuff out. I advocated earlier for Juuso Välimäki to get to experience the calming effect of Chris Tanev (Oliver Kylington would have also been a great candidate) but instead it’s been Nikita Zadorov which doesn’t feel good at all.
Erik Gudbranson is leading the team in CF Rel% in the same way the Buffalo Sabres are undefeated. Sure. Why not.
Andersson seems to be Sutter’s early favourite right now, and when he’s not headbutting Oilers he’s been….better than he was last year, but still not delivering on the flashes from seasons past. The season is long though, and it’s a better sign than not he has Sutter’s trust.
Trevor Lewis?
Jacob Markström has been neither the reason the Flames couldn’t win nor the reason they lost. You’d love to see him find the gear he ended last season on, but at least he hasn’t been like any of the other big name goalies who are really stalling to start this year.
The team will probably start winning games if they keep up this play, especially if they tighten some stuff up. Or they won’t, because hockey is cruel!
I’m sure other stuff has happened, but we save that kind of quality observation for Overtime 2: Happening on Twitter Spaces until we figure out Twitch. Be sure to follow @thescorchstack and join in after every game as we give you the best in Calgary Flames analysis and definitely nothing else.
Who is the hottest Flame this year?
The debate that is tearing up the internet
by The Scorchies
In our season previews last week, we gave you the best previews bar none of what was to come for this season from Your Calgary Flames, but even we couldn’t agree on everything. Several players got listed as being the hottest Flame on the roster, and ramz made the unfortunate inclusion of the New Girl hubba hubba meme which she has appropriated apologized and donated to charity for.
This is mildly upsetting because Flames are by definition are hot, but we need to know who is the hottest.
So instead of talking about it amongst the Scorchies, we want to know what you — the readers — think of this subject. Who is the hottest Calgary Flame? This will of course be limited to just this season, so please don’t apologies to whoever wrote this list that thinks that Andrew Ference is elite level hot.
So anyway, please vote in our very important survey and we will publish the results next week.
Up Next Week
There is rambling that your favourite Monday morning recurrent column could be back. Well, it just might be.
We are inevitably disappointed when the wrong Flame is dubbed the hottest.
Perhaps if we are lucky, there is a win to discuss?