The Calgary Flames have died. RIP to the Calgary Flames. Let’s recap some bullshit one last time before we put this thing to bed for a few months.
It felt appropriate to treat this as a wrap up for the entire season, because who cares about this entirely irrelevant past week? It stands to reason that the last Big Monday Thing should be the Biggest, Mondayest Thing, and that’s exactly what’s happening.
The Year of: 2021
Results From The Past Season: 56 games. This bizarre and madcap NHL season boiled down to a mere 56 games, and often times, it sure felt like it was ten times longer. Think back to the beginning of this abbreviated season. You were overjoyed/already annoyed at the prospect of nine matchups between Matthew and Brady Tkachuk (on a sad sack Ottawa Senators team that would be thoroughly drubbed night in and night out). We were optimistic about something called Dominik Simon. Flames fans were relatively certain there would not be many Joakim Nordstrom appearances. Nobody was thinking about Darryl Sutter for any reason at all. How many games would David Rittich play? No one knows but at least he’s not in Toronto!
This was five months ago. Oliver Backlund wasn’t even alive yet.
Ultimately, your Calgary Flames did not do enough in this sprint of a season to make any noise in a division we all hope we never have to see again. Had they played a full 82 under regular circumstances? Best not to dwell on it.
Flames (Final) Record: 26-27-3, 55 pts
Standings: 5th place in the North Division. It says here that the top four teams in the North Division qualify for the playoffs. And it says here on a different sheet of paper that five is one more than four. In this case, that’s bad.
I’ll try to synthesize these numbers and see what that all means.
Soundtrack: My Life Is Over And I Couldn’t Be Happier - PUP
This is a little too on the nose, but hey, sometimes there’s a reason why that happens.
What We Liked:
Blasty was cool. We probably won’t see those jerseys again next year (which is stupid, but inevitable), so I hope you got one while you could.
Chris Tanev defied the odds and turned his $4.5 million per year contract into a real bargain. And he made Noah Hanifin good in the process! Johnny Gaudreau started and ended the season extremely strong, gelling on a line with Matthew Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm after finally, FINALLY being separated from Sean Monahan. It seems more and more likely that we see him wearing the Flaming C beyond the length of his contract. I truly hope we do.
Andrew Mangiapane cemented himself as maybe one of the most undervalued forwards in the NHL, becoming the best player at 5v5 on the entire team. Set a new career high in goals despite the shortened season. A true prince. It’s exciting to think about what he’ll do next.
Jacob Markstrom? Don’t know yet.
Mikael Backlund was great yet again. Same with Derek Ryan. Maybe the two most dependable and effective bottom six centermen in the league (not researching this, so just roll with it). Ryan will likely not be returning, and if you told me at the beginning of his tenure in Calgary that I would truly dread the day he left, I would have thought you were crazy. But here we are.
Seeing the Matthew Phillips debut was wonderful. Juuso Valimaki had a really up and down campaign, but another season of development under his belt is a good thing. Rasmus Andersson had a difficult year, but still looks primed to be a cornerstone on the blueline for a long time.
There’s going to be a lot of changes coming to the Flames over the coming weeks and months, but it’s nice to at least highlight the things that worked out this year, because the stuff that didn’t is so much more apparent.
What We Would Prefer Not To See:
The cause of death for this iteration of the Calgary Flames was quite simply an inability to score goals. I know that’s simplistic and borderline reductive, but it’s true. The Flames dallied through too many stretches where they wouldn’t generate any shots for minutes on end, and the ones they were getting did not end up in the net. There were 18 times where the Flames scored one goal or less in a losing effort. Over a 56 game season, that’s just too much. Maybe with a full complement of contests, they go on a stretch and sneak into a playoff position a la 2015, but even then, if they were scoring at the rate they did for 2021, it’s pretty unlikely.
It’s hard to pinpoint a sole culprit for the dry spells. Early on it was hapless forechecking schemes from a now in the ether Geoff Ward. Slumps from Gaudreau, Tkachuk, and an apparently withered Sean Monahan certainly didn’t help. Darryl Sutter infused some new life tactically at first, but even that was short lived. The top pairing of Mark Giordano and Rasmus Andersson were too under fire in their own end too often to create too much havoc in the offensive zone. And let’s not forget just a dearth of talent or depth in the bottom six. Mikael Backlund is one of the finest Calgary Flames of all time, but he can only carry around so much dead weight before it limits what he can do. Milan Lucic is that dead weight.
Simply put, you need to score more goals than the other team to win hockey games. That’s probably a famous quote from some well known philosopher.
Enemy of the Season:
Let’s go with our old nemesis, the novel coronavirus Covid-19. That seemed to throw a lot of wrenches into a lot of plans this season. I can’t help but think how much better everything could have fared if not for that old bastard, the coronavirus. Go to hell, coronavirus.
What Happens Next/We Were Right:
null.
Look man, I don’t know what you want from me here.
Mike Smith of The Week:
Very uncharacteristic of Vezina candidate Mike Smith to cake his pants on a routine point shot during moments where you need to be able to depend on him. I wonder if this has ever happened before. I’ve literally never thought about this.
Unrelated Fact:
Just showing this soft goal against Mike Smith again, really only to drive home how rare and mystifying this is. Truly bizarre. In case you didn’t know, the Edmonton Oilers (the team that employs Mike Smith) had a 4-1 lead over the Winnipeg Jets in the third period of the third game of their playoff series (of which Winnipeg has a 2-0 lead, and a 3rd win would indicate something of a stranglehold on the matchup). This clip above is when Josh Morrissey tied the game at 4-4 (4-4 is like 4-1, except the team that had one goal also scores three more goals).
Winnipeg then scored one more goal. This meant they had more goals than Edmonton (the team Mike Smith is on). They now have three more wins in the series than Edmonton (who, if you recall, employ Mike Smith).
See You Next Season:
A Calgary Flames offseason means a hibernation for the Big Monday Thing as well. With no Flames hockey to recap, there’s not really a lot to talk about on a weekly procedural basis, so it’s time to say smell ya later to this feature for a little while. It absolutely has not been fun to do this all season, but people seems to enjoy it, and I lied, it has been fun, so it’s been my pleasure to provide it to you every week, and it will be back.
As to what will take this space during the summer, who knows? Seattle Mariners chat? Movie corner? Nothing? It’s probably nothing. But an abundance of time gives us the flexibility to try some fun bonus stuff out, so maybe there’s more of that to offer upcoming.
Or maybe there isn’t.
See you next season.