One year can change a lot

By Derrick Newman

A year ago Darryl Sutter was canned as the General Manager of the Calgary Flames. The Flames subsequently went on an unbelievable ascent up the Western Conference standings to come only three points shy of a playoff berth.

Fast forward to today. Darryl is now the head coach of the LA Kings and the Flames are a different looking team.

They are substantially younger with the likes of Roman Horak, Blake Comeau, Mikael Backlund, Paul Byron, TJ Brodie, Leland Irving, and Greg Nemisz all getting time with the big club.  This has led to a small dose of optimism in this city...ok, well less pessimism.

Let's be honest: The Calgary Flames Suck

By Derrick Newman

Definition of Struggling: Strive to achieve or attain something in the face of difficulty or resistance.

In a nutshell, this defines the Calgary Flames, period.

With six losses in their last eight games, the Flames are quickly falling out of the race for a playoff spot and rapidly increasing their chances of winning the draft lottery.

Now some might say, “Just look at last year and what the Flames managed to do after they fired Darryl. It can happen again.”

So what is it this time that’s going to spark this band of low scoring misfits to do a complete 180 and get the ship pointed in the right direction?

Calgary Flames Post Mortem

The Calgary Flames missed the playoffs. Again. That’s two in a row for people that are keeping track.


After spending five straight seasons in the post-season the Flames have now fallen on tough times in the competitive Western Conference.

The question on most people’s minds for the better part of the last 2 weeks is, simply put, why?

Why did this team not make the playoffs? Why did it take so long for this team to come together? What exactly went wrong, and is the current direction of the team the right one?

Well, here are my two cents on the season that was, whether you want to hear them or not.

On July 1st, 2010, the Flames signed Olli Jokinen and Alex Tanguay. I applauded the signing of Tanguay, given the dollar figure and his history with Iginla. Darryl Sutter bought on a low, and cashed in big time when Tanguay immediately put up numbers, finishing top 30 in league scoring, and helping Iginla finish 7th in scoring, which included 43 goals.

Guest Columnist: Flames down Avs

Newman is on hiatus for a little while, so I'll be trying to fill the daily negative, I mean reality-check based, Flames' blogs that he is so aptly known for.
Last night the Flames gave up the first goal of the game for the first time in as long as I can remember. Maybe we should get back into the Delorean and get it up to 88 mph ... nope, I'll just use the internet. It was on October 16th against the Edmonton Oilers. Damn. That was almost a month ago; at the very least it was a span of 9 games. What does that mean? Who knows. The Flames are an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, rolled in a slice of bacon right now. There was no way I (or most Flames fans) thought they could turn it around and win after Christ Stewart scored less than two minutes into the third period. But they did.
Credit to B Sutter for changing up his lines and uniting David Moss, Mikael Backlund, and Niklas Hagman together though. That was very Keenan-esque of him, seeing as despite moving Morrison from wing to center and then back to wing, and dropping Jokinen off of the first line (after forcing that combination for an eternity) are the only real line changes he's made all year (edit: I just realized that we're only a handful of games into the season and not an "eternity"; so, why is everyone getting on Iginla already again?).