By Derrick Newman
Really?
It isn’t hard enough being a Calgary Flames fan right now and they go and pull a stunt like this...
Up 3-1 with less than five minutes left against the WORST team in the NHL and the Flames somehow find a way to lose.
Is this 1999 all over again? Where are the young guns? Is Todd Simpson the captain? Where’s Sasha Lakovic when you need him?
This has gone from embarrassing to downright laughable.
The Flames, who claim to be a veteran laden professional hockey team, continue to exhibit traits of an inexperienced pre-pubescent novice division-five team that can’t form a functional power play and can’t shut a team down if their life depended on it.
They haven’t scored a power play goal since last week in Detroit and haven’t scored a power play goal on home ice since, get this, October 26th , when they managed to beat the Colorado Avalanche 4-2.
Talk about long time no eat.
Now, to be fair the Flames only had one opportunity on the man advantage against Columbus so on this night the power play was not the issue, but in broader terms it’s a major issue – it also doesn’t help that their quarterback Mark Giordano was placed on the IR yesterday either.
There are rays of sunshine beaming through the pile of shit that takes the ice every night.
TJ Brodie has been amazing since being recalled. With Gio going down he has shown great poise on the power play and in his ability to jump into the play. This bodes well for the future of the team and for him to be the leader of “Young Guns 2.0: How the west was won (in 2019).”
Also, they recalled Joe Piskula, and sent down PL3 (THANK TEBOW...errr GOD), who by all accounts has been playing great in Abbotsford as a shutdown defenceman. In seeing this I can only imagine it’s a matter of when and not if before the Flames find a suitor for Cory Sarich. As the season goes on and his contract becomes less and less of a burden on other teams, he will be snatched up as it is clearly apparent the Flames have little to no use for him other than wreaking havoc on the popcorn supply in the press box every night.
Back to my rant though.
What can you do?
Do you follow St. Louis, Carolina, Washington, and Anaheim with the oh-so fashionable trend of canning your bench boss in hopes that the season might be salvaged?
It’s worked so far for the Blues and my money would be that it works for Anaheim as well.
There comes a point where someone has to own up to the horrid display of hockey that is being played every night.
You can’t fire the players. Jay Feaster isn’t going anywhere until he is given an adequate run at turning this ship around. So is Brent Sutter the fall guy?
Is his voice falling on deaf ears? I’m kind of beginning to think so.
I don’t believe in switching the coach just for the sake of change but this guy has been given two + years to do something, anything, with this group and he has produced ZERO results. NONE. ZILCH. NADA. NYET.
You can’t argue with that. You simply can’t. No, stop trying. Give me a reasonable argument. I dare you.
The time that he has been given has been fair. His message, or system, is clearly not getting through. The near miracle run of last year was just that...a near miracle which produced yet another close calland nothing in terms of positive results.
Just think if Kipper wasn’t standing on his head for the last month, where this team would be? You want to talk about scary and depressing? At least we get to watch that guy lay his heart on the line every single night.
That’s more than 95% of the players in front of him can say.
I’m tired of it. I’m pissed off. I’m tired of hating the team I love.
I want changes. I want to know that this team is headed in the right direction. For the last three years, however, it’s progressively gotten worse and worse.
“I can only hope the Big Lebowski kills me before the Germans cut my dick off.”
twitter.com/TSRNewman
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3 comments:
Fire Sutter, hire Carlyle.
I actually thought it was a better effort tonight (and a more enjoyable game to watch) than the win against Nashville.
And let's not kid ourselves Derrick, this team just isn't very good. Haven't we known that (maybe not willing to admit it) from the start of the year? It isn't the coach, it's the players. And by January first when this team is still playing poorly and inconsistently, Feaster will realize that and start looking towards the future - and by that I mean trading everything and anything we have for prospects and picks at the trade deadline.
Side Note: Yakupov has 46 points in 23 games.
I like the Lakovic comparison how about St Louis, Guigere, Stillman .... oh yea they all won cups after leaving the shames!!!
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