Laughing Stock

I can see the line-up at the hospital for broken ankles is getting pretty long, as people have been jumping off of the bandwagon at a tremendous pace.

Fresh off one of the worst sets of trades I have ever witnessed, the Calgary Flames lay a massive egg on the ice tonight against the Minnesota Wild. Fortunately I did not have to bear witness to this game tonight so I really can not say a whole lot about it except for the fact that once again the Flames offence continues to fire on all cylinders (See: sarcasm).

The Flames were shut out for the 4th time since mid-January. They had been shut out zero times before that. They are not good and have a tough Devils team coming into the Dome on Friday night…yikes!

As for the trades, I am thinking Sutter must have taken the wrong pills this morning because these trades do not make an ounce of sense in my mind; except for maybe the Toskala deal, but it’s a stretch.

Toskala was once a good goalie, but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. He gives Kipper that added support in net and some veteran experience but is he really any better than McElhinney? He had 2 ½ decent seasons in San Jose but that was 3 years ago. His stats this year are appalling. A 3.66 GAA and a .874 SP%! I do not care what team you play for, that is horrendous. McElhinney’s stats: 3.22 GAA, .885 SP%. Equally bad; fine.

I do not blame Sutter for not watching any Leafs games but that’s what scouts are for. The Leafs are bad for a reason, and now the Flames have 3 of their forwards, their mediocre defenceman and their crappy goalie. Why make the trade? Where is the logic?

As for giving up on Dustin Boyd, let me take a quote from my Sunday blog:

Boyd has the most upside and would clearly bring back the most in return. The other option would be Langkow who garners a $4.5 million dollar cap hit for the next two seasons. In my opinion, if the Flames deal Boyd, they only give up on yet another up and coming player to early in his career. Like St. Louis, Giguere, Stillman, Lombardi and most recently Phaneuf, Dustin Boyd is a Flames draft pick who is starting to show signs of his potential. Trading another one of our young guys for an older more experienced player (Jokinen last year, Stuart a couple years back, etc.) only sets this franchise further back.

And what did the Flames do? Exactly what they have been doing for the past 15 years; giving up on players way too quickly, but this time they received next to nothing in return, so maybe I was a tad off on the market value of Boyd. But still, why deal him if you are not going to get anything. This move pisses me off almost as much as the next deal does.

Why is Sutter determined to get older and slower? Steve “Freakin” Staois! He is 35 years old and has a cap hit of $2.6 million next year. Aaron Johnson, when used, is 9 years younger and made just over half a million dollars. Johnson was a decent ‘fill-in guy’ and made next to nothing, so why get rid of him? Staios is a 6th/7th defenceman and slow as molasses.

I had numerous Oiler fans laugh in my face today when they heard this deal, and rightfully so as Darryl Sutter is slowly making the Flames the laughing stock of the NHL.

This has been,

Newman on the Flames