Things are looking grim.
It's not just that the Flames are losing. It's that they are playing so pitifully in the process. Amidst a soul-sucking losing streak and coming off an embarrassing loss to a basement dweller at home, the best Calgary could muster against the Red Wings was 15 shots.
Fifteen! To put that in perspective, Marian Hossa had 16 shots in Atlanta's game last night. A single player had more shots than our entire team.
There isn't a positive left to dwell upon. There doesn't seem to be a shred of life or dignity in the Flames dressing room right now. On the ice the team looks defeated and lost. On the bench, the coaching staff is grossly mismanaging the players, if only because they're desperate to find a solution.
Grossly mismanaging. There, I said it.
It started before the game. Playfair removed Jamie Lundmark from the line-up - one of the few centers that was actually winning draws and creating anything out there - and left a totally useless Darren McCarty in. The result? The Flames once again struggled in the face-off circle and McCarty did little more than take penalties.
During the contest, Matthew Lombardi, the second leading scorer on the team and top +/- player, played a mere 4 minutes at even strength over the first two periods. Four minutes! Meanwhile, Dustin Boyd was drawing shifts with Tanguay and Iginla. W! T! F! That's just plain goddamn DUMB. Unless you missed it, Jim, Friesen was the one who committed the turn-over that lead to the Wings first goal. Also, Lombardi's been one of your best players all year.
And, like Sutter before him, Playfair spent the entire evening fruitlessly juggling line combinations to no avail. Literally every shift there was a new trio of players. Ridiculous. Like a 40 second shift is enough to determine whether a given troika is going to mesh or not. Fuck.
Everywhere you look with the Flames there is ineptitude. The forecheck is flacid. The systems are bland and stagnant. The players almost never win puck battles. Stupid penalties abound each game (the Flames took 3 penalties in the last 10 minutes of the game last night while trailing- tripping, hooking, hooking). Even Kipper looks frustrated with this team. And he's a pretty stoic individual.
Im at a loss to explain it at this point. It could be the players have finally tuned out the defense-first philosophy of the current management regime. And, if that's true, there isn't a player demotion, promotion or trade that's going to right this ship.
