I hated the small centre / soft winger / oafish d-men composition that comprised this team for the last several season. This team is built to wreck you in a playoff series.
But part of the brand they've built is limited skill offense. January hockey is skill hockey, it's when Hueslius dominated, when Iggy heats up, when Bert dominated for a while last season - it's not conducive to cycling, hitting, or dump-and-chasing which is how the Flames are built. Games like Vancouver-Calgary from the other night don't happen much in January because it's completely untenable. It would just wear a team out. I don't care how much Bourque cares if he is gassed come playoff time or his body doesn't stand up to the pounding.
In January, when the Flames just finished a solid start to the season that had them competing for the division title and avoiding any significant injuries - it's possible they'd hit a "bump" - emotional, physical, or otherwise, where they had been struggling, got off to a bad start, bad penalty call and quick PP goal, and took a game off.
They just played 9 games with a combined 5 days of rest. They were exhausted, in California, got pushed off regular schedule (from the SJ airport rules) and...they took a game off. A road game. Dion gave up a goal because he came cross-ice for a huge hit - and missed badly. Going way too slow - Dion didn't "not care" into a bad play, he didn't have the legs to match his aggressiveness.
It's not that I'm ok with it, or that I wanted them to take a game off, it's simply reality. I saw the Oilers take 25 games off as MacTavish sobbed, I've seen teams take entire seasons off - let's not lose our shit because the Flames took one game off.
This team would probably benefit from a trade, Sutter should be looking. But not fire-selling.
This is the same team it was at the start of the season. Little has changed. As Flames fans, do not let yourselves get thrown under the bandwagon based on only the calender.
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$6.5 mil for a defenseman who is poor defensively, and gets with the excuse of "he brings good offense to the table". Turns out, he doesn't do much of that either, sitting 49th in the league among defensemen in scoring, and a -1 (although I'd be curious what that number would be as a "regular strength" number... likely lower I'd assume). At least his new teammate making that much on the team sitting just behind him at 53rd in defensemen scoring is a +10.
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