The Big Monday Thing: I Put Titles On These Things Now
Things are getting wild on the Big Monday Thing
The Calgary Flames are going to kill you.
Uh, let me explain.
If you, utilizing the precious little free time that you have, hunker down to watch a hockey game featuring your beloved Flaming C, there’s a better than average chance you’re going to watch them skate away with a victory. So far, so good, right? Typically, the Flames finish a season with a positive win differential. That’s just math, dorks. What makes Calgary interesting (interesting as a word choice really making a weak argument here) is that they will force you to endure large swaths of bad hockey with boundless consistency. It is damn near unwatchable, and the sheer frequency in which we’ve been subjected to it is enough to fill one to the brim with existential dread. The things we could have been doing instead of watching the Flames get held up at the blue line on the limpest of zone entries six times in a row. How many times can you watch a team win a game after being badly outplayed for at least an entire third of any given contest?
Hey, let’s find out together, because it seems like the answer might be higher than we think.
As to how any of this is going to kill you: it’s not. I’m just trying to draw some eyeballs here.
The Week of: February 8th-14th
Results From Past Week: Honestly, the week in Flames hockey was actually pretty good, but the end of it is rightfully going to leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. They finished off their series with the Jets, securing a 3-2 victory on the strength of a late Elias Lindholm winner. That was followed up with a 3-1 win over Vancouver to start the first of four straight with their West Coast rival. The results from the second game against the Canucks were so offensive I can’t show them without a censor bar.
Flames Overall Record: 7-6-1, 15 pts
Standings: 5th place in the North Division. Moving on up! For all the talk about how the North Division is the worst in the entire COVID-era NHL, the Flames would be in a playoff spot had they remained in the West Division. Pretty great advertisement for the West Division. COVID is so biased against Canadian teams, I’m going to call it Gary Bettman. Hey, now that’s a pretty good little joke that I’m sure won’t be blown out of proportion.
Soundtrack: Get Better - Frank Turner
I don’t know, this one seems pretty self-explanatory.
What We Liked: I temper this by saying I don’t believe in its sustainability, or that I’m not sure if this is indicative of other problems, but a common refrain in hockey is that successful teams get contributions from everyone, not just their top line. The Flames are certainly in that category right now, as it seems like some of the more unlikely sources of offense on this team are pacing them when the usual weapons go through the motions. While Johnny Gaudreau and Elias Lindholm continue their torrid pace to start the year, names like Froese, Bennett, and Lucic are finding their names on the scoresheet.
Regarding this, Tibs made a really good point on twitter yesterday, theorizing that Flames fans have a bit of Philly sports fan in them, less from a battery throwing standpoint, but more from a “we can’t be happy with anything” perspective, and I think there is something to that.
Because instead of being happy about this, uh, secondary scoring, I’m mostly waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the offense to dry up completely. It really makes a fan thankful for Jacob Markstrom, a man who truly illustrates the disparity in work to credit ratio on the Flames.
The solution for this is for all of us to truly lean into being like Philly sports fans. It’s easier than figuring out what the Flames need to do to right the ship. Where logic dies, chaos thrives.
Speaking of thriving, Andrew Mangiapane is really good, and I don’t want him to ever stop doing what he’s doing. The bread boy is truly becoming an important cog in the Flames machine, and it’s not a stretch to say he’s most regularly the best forward on the team. The counting stats are starting to pile in, satisfying the normies and the numbers crowd alike, and I think we should go ahead and get used to that. There are memes that are perfect for scenarios like this. I’m sure you’ve seen them, and I trust you to find them on your own time.
What We Would Prefer Not To See: You absolutely cannot expect to have continued success in this league while punting on entire periods of games (in some instances, multiple periods). Jacob Markstrom is really good at everything, but he specifically excels when he is seeing a lot of pucks, and, uh, thank god.
The Flames are a flawed group, but there is enough skill in any given game to drive play north, so it is baffling that we have seen multiple periods this year where the opposition is hanging triple the amount of shots against. They should not be this bad. In a normal year, this is the kind of thing that tends to even itself out over time, and maybe that’s how we see this season shake out as well, but I don’t need to tell anyone that this campaign isn’t business as usual, and the runway to work out these kinks is much shorter than normal. This is an anomaly they’re going to have to figure out in short order. Whether it’s a systems issue, bad luck, or a lack of depth (most likely it’s a combination of all three), they’re going to need to start throwing something at the wall to see what breaks the curse.
Mikael Backlund being injured certainly won’t help. It doesn’t sound like the greatest player in the world will be out for too much time, but given how Backlund, along with linemate Mangiapane, has been one of the best forwards on the team of late, here’s hoping it’s a quick recovery. I just don’t want to watch a hockey game that Mikael Backlund isn’t in. I remember what that looks like. Unsettling. Not for me.
Enemy of the Week: Whoever injured Mikael Backlund on Saturday
Seriously, what the heck? No one really seems to know what happened, but rest assured I will find out, and justice for Backlund will be served.
If it turns out that person was Milan Lucic, so be it. I don’t know, I’m sure it’ll be really hard to watch Looch go away. I don’t know how we’ll ever adjust. I can’t believe Milan Lucic would try to murder his own linemate, but we all saw him attempt to do it, plain as day. It takes me no pleasure to report that we all saw Flames forward Milan Lucic try to take off his skate and affix it to his stick like some kind of hellblade, with designs on the murder of his teammate Mikael Backlund in mind.
What Happens Next/We Were Right:
My prediction is that Juuso Valimaki, in one of the first two games of the Vancouver series, will dislocate his jaw, swallow Canucks rookie Nils Hoglander whole, consuming his essence, thus leading to a 1+ attribute boost to all major offensive stats
Being right all the time does get exhausting, thank you for asking. Rest in piss Nils Hoglander.
Hope you’re ready for a steady diet of Vancouver and Edmonton during this Family Day shortened week. With four games against only those two natural Flames rivals, the discourse over the next few days is going to be unbearable.
That is, of course, until we discover what innovative new way to injure himself that only a generational player like Connor McDavid can conjure up. Edmonton’s star forward will presumably move so fast on a rush up ice that the blades on his skates melt, causing him to lurch forward and rocket himself through the boards and into the zamboni, where he will be steamrolled, the liquids in his body used to flood the ice between periods. Oilers fans will blame it on, I don’t know, Nikita Nesterov and demand he be extradited back to Russia.
It doesn’t work that way, Edmonton.
Paul Byron on waivers tweet of the week:
This one is so much better than the last time we saw one of these.
Unrelated Fact:
This tree is called a Bloodwood Tree, for obvious reasons, and oh boy do I not care for it. This goes out to all those people who looked at trees in their life and said “boy it would be cool if those bad boys could bleed”
See You Next Week: Let the ScorchStack be among a growing army of people who have but a simple message to deliver: Fuck Bell.
Free ramz. See you in seven days.