I’m curious if you've spent even 10 minutes understanding the most important development in human history or no?
That thing of course is The Big Monday Thing, right here on The Scorchstack.
The Week of: April 18th-24th
Results From Past Week:
Your Calgary Flames locked up the Pacific Division this week, but I forgot which game clinched it for them. Sound off in the comments if you know which of the following matches it was:
a) a 5-2 victory in Chicago on Monday
b) getting a single point in a 3-2 shootout loss the next day in Nashville
c) returning home to the Saddledome and earning a 4-2 win over the Dallas Stars
d) a 6-3 triumph over the Vancouver Canucks that puts a real dent in their own playoff push
The winner will receive a prize. Not from us, but maybe if you put your business card in a raffle for a free restaurant lunch or something. Look at you, a raffle prize winner. Must be nice!
Flames Overall Record: 49-20-10, 108 pts
Standings: 1st place in the Pacific Division, 4th in the Western Conference. For the remainder of this here season, the Flames are officially 1st in the Pacific, and 2nd in the West. That’s not going to change regardless of any future results, but again, we keep things honest around here, and by virtue of the top three teams in the Central Division having more points than the Flames, well, you know where we land on this.
Soundtrack: 40 - U2
I did a search for “songs named 40”. Here’s Bono.
What We Liked:
Folks, you just gotta give it up to Dillon Dubé.
There has been an ancient curse haunting the kid from Cochrane throughout the majority of the 2021-22 NHL season, but he must have bathed in garlic recently, or cast a fortune reversal spell, or SOMETHING, because his luck has turned around in a big way of late.
According to this article I found at discoverairdrie.com, Dubé has six goals in his last six games, after only notching 10 in the previous 70, a stretch in which he even found himself as a healthy scratch. We all frequent Discover Airdrie, so I don’t need to tell you about the legitimacy of these stats.
By trying this one weird trick (putting him on a line with real hockey players like Calle Järnkrok and Blake Coleman), he’s since gone on to hit career highs in goals and points, and if he’s peaking going into the playoffs, that’s just about perfect, because the Flames are going to need contributions from just about everyone if they want to succeed.
What We Would Prefer Not To See:
Seems to me like that curse that was plaguing Dillon Dubé has found a new host in Calle Järnkrok. Like Dillon, ol’ Ironhook is far too good a player to be kept off the scoresheet for too much longer, but damn, not even freaking Elon Musk could pay enough money for a Järnkrok goal at this point. And that guy has Twitter money!
Just keeping things topical around here so as to make these articles feel unique to a certain moment in time.
Enemy of the Week:
If Dustin Wolf doesn’t start at least one of the Flames’ remaining three regular season contests, whoever is responsible for making that happen will be permanently slotted at #1 on the inaugural Scorchstack All Time Enemies list. Buddy, you do NOT want to be on that list.
What Comes Next:
The regular season comes to a close by the week’s end. What a long, strange trip this has been. The Flames have three teams standing between them and Game 1 of the first round, and perhaps fittingly, the team’s remaining docket will go a long way to help determine who Calgary will play. As it stands, one of the teams who currently occupies a wild card spot - and by extension, a potential Round 1 opponent - are the Nashville Predators, and that’s who the Flames have a date with on Tuesday night. The Preds are in a dog fight with Dallas, Vegas, and Vancouver (ed. note: sure) for those final two wild card spots, and I mean okay, if the Flames can keep Vegas out of the playoffs, maybe this is worth exploring.
The season concludes with road games in Minnesota and Winnipeg, and short of some individual milestones and moments, I think we’re all going to be hoping to get through this as fast as possible and onto the first round.
Theoren Fleury Wades Into The French Election Of The Week:
You are by now well aware that Theo Fleury is truly the champion of this section of the Big Monday Thing, whether he’s sharing Storytimes in regards to his friend Vladimir Putin, or waxing poetic on Marxist theory, or whatever this is, the former Flames phenom has proven that there’s nothing on earth he can’t rant about despite a lack of any real knowledge of the subject matter.
This week, his reign on top continued unopposed, as Fleury did a thing he’s done a lot recently: be right about things for the completely wrong reasons:
Okay, the WEF stealing the election thing is a bit of a stretch, but you know, still pretty good.
I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but next week Theo is going to congratulate employees at Amazon and Starbucks for unionizing.
Unrelated Fact:
You gotta check out this ejection by Kyle Schwarber. One for the ages.
If you’re an MLB fan at all, whether you're new to the game or you’ve been watching your whole life, you’ve probably had a reaction to Angel Hernandez that looks just like this. I know I have. 10/10, Mr. Schwarber. Please do it again.
See You Next Week:
It’s Masterton Trophy season, friends, and you know what that means: PHWA traumaporn fanfic. Any player on a team who has been horribly injured, or, failing that, “overcome adversity” by managing to still play hockey in the midst of credible sexual assault allegations against them are going to get some love letters written to them by the people cover their teams and have to hand out the dumbest trophy in sports whichever of these players suffered the most.
For the Flames, who have not had to endure much in the way of hardship this year, they went in another direction, nominating Chris Tanev for the prize, mostly because he didn’t get hurt or have anything bad happen to him.
Safe to say he’s not going to win this year, and I’m sure Tanev is real broken up about that.