With 13 games in the bag I figured it was time to start breaking out a few "basic plus" stats for the club. While 13 games is a spit in the bucket in terms of sample size, the number will give us a bit of an indication about who's been doing what so far:
Above is the raw data - goals, assists, games played and ice-time.
The resultant ESP/60 numbers are actually pretty encouraging. Last year, the only Flames who were able to break the 2.00 threshold were Lundmark and Leclerc - largely because they spent the bulk of the season with another team. Lombardi and Iginla were the best of the regular Flames players with 1.91 and 1.80 marks respectively.
As you can see, Lombo and Iginla have started out with even stronger figures this year. In addition, Langow has a decent ESP/60 number while Alex Tanguay has thus far struggled. If (or, rather, when) Alex shakes off his slump, one can safely assume he will get closer to his team leading number of 3.15 from last year. Further, a resurgent Tanguay will no doubt assist Koabsew in improving his rather lackluster ES point production as well (assuming that line remains intact).
The bad news is only the primary guys for Calgary are contributing at all at even strength. Nilson, Huselius, Friesen and Amonte have thus far been pretty much useless at producing 5on5. Hell, even Rhett Warrener has been more efficient at ES production than Friesen and Amonte! Ouch. There's $3.4 million well spent.
The PPP/60 numbers are rather skewed and therefore diffcult to interpret. No one on the Flames has anything near an elite-level number besides Lundmark, Lombardi and Kobasew and that's thanks more to a miniscule sample size than anything else (Lundmark has 2 assists in 15 minutes of PP ice-time, for example). Not that I wouldn't like to see a bit more of Lundmark on the PP mind you...
Dion Phaneuf is right on par with his 4.54 number from last year. No complaints there. However, Damond Langkow (05/06 - 4.94), Jarome Iginla (05/06 - 4.21) and Kristian Huselius are all behind the previous season's figures.
Huselius in particular has been a disappointment. He lead the Flames last year in terms of PP efficiency with 5.54 points per 60 minutes of ice-time. This season so far he's at the bottom of the barrel among PP regulars with 2.26. Ugh.
Not that Jarome's been much better. Calgary's PP struggles are pretty clearly reflected by the fact that the team leaders in terms of points and ice-time are putting up 3rd-liner type production averages on the PP. I wonder how many more wins the Flames could have squeezed out of their first 13 games if guys like Iginla and Huselius were generating points at some sort of decent rate with the man-advantage...
Anyways, as mentioned, it's still very early. A slump here or point streak there for just about any player mentioned would probably alter the included indexes significantly. However, one of the few potentially encouraging trends that can be taken from the above is the fact that the Flames are indeed scoring at ES - which was their major weakness last season. And that's despite the struggles of Alex Tanguay. The challenge facing the Flames now is to get their specialty teams in order. If they can continue to generate points at ES while improving their PK goal prevention and/or their PP production (to even middling levels), they should certainly start winning a few more contests.
