I had a nice, fat, play-off prognostication post all ready to go yesterday when my particular blogger server decided to take an extended vacation. As it is, the post is now useless after last night's action, so I'll have to do up a fresh one. Booo!
What Im left to talk about today is, unfortunately, another Flames road loss. In keeping with their "win one, lose one" mentality when away from the dome, the Flames were defeated by the Wild last night.
In convincing fashion.
For the 3rd straight game, Calgary was badly outshot and outchanced. Apparently, only Kiprusoffian heroics kept the score close. In addition, the old offensive-power-outage took effect last night, rendering the Flames almost totally ineffectual at both ends of the rink.
Of course, this personally wasn't a shock to me. Since October, Calgary has been a bad team on the road. They've been slightly better, during short bursts, but almost never "good". In fact, the brutal road-trip to open the season seems to have left an indelible mark on the team's psyche - they seem to lapse back into the poor habits that plagued them over those first few weeks whenever they travel away from home.
In contrast, the Flames that appeared during 10 home games in November seems to be the Flames team that usually shows up here in Calgary. And that's the pattern that Calgary has been repeating for most of the season: a confused, inconsistent and defensively lax team vs. a collection of strong-willed, well-organized world-beaters. It's safe to say that the Flames would be well on their way to clinching the division and play-off berth if they could have managed to take the latter team on the road more often this season.
Oh well. All is not lost. The Flames have two winnable games coming up (Blues and BJ's) before meeting Dallas to end the road trip. If we can coax at least another 4 points out of this excursion, I'll be happy.
Positives:
- Kiprusoff. Of course. Only 2 goals against in 37 shots. Could have been a 5-1 loss instead.
- Byron Ritchie. Second game back and he manages to tickle the twine.
- Less than 5 PP's against! Finally figure out how to stay out of the box. Not that it helped a whole lot.
Negatives:
- Fall below .500 on the road again.
- Still in a dogfight for the NW division and play-off spot.
- No offense. Kipper kept it close, but the Flames forwards couldn't seem to get it going (again).
- No Defense. The Flames surrender 38 shots against(!). Over the last 3 games, Calgary has allowed an average of 41 shots on net. Just plain bad.
- Powerplay gets shut-out. 0 for 3 on the night.
Next up...The Blues.
