In the absence of any direct observation by me, the Flames seemed to have turned things around a bit. They're still giving up too many goals and the PK is currently the worst in the league, but at least the sticks have come alive. Speaking of which, Calgary has had a two-goal scorer in each of their games so far (Langkow, Langkow, Huselius, Lombardi, Huselius) and will set a new league record if someone manages to equal that feat tomorrow night (I'm looking at you, Tanguay).
2-2-1 is looking like a nice little record considering we were staring down the barrel of a 0-5-1 opening series just a week ago. Given that I expected the worst from this road trip, the 4 points already accrued is an acceptable .500 kind of mark and I therefore consider anything garnered against the Avs on Tuesday to be a bonus.
**Bonus Stats supplement**
Defencemen icetime:
Phaneuf - 139 TOI, 27:48/game
Sarich - 110 TOI, 22:00/game
Aucoin - 102 TOI, 20:28/game
Regehr - 98 TOI, 19:45/game
Eriksson - 79 TOI, 15:52/game
Warrener - 71 TOI, 14:16/game
Some interesting trends here. Robyn Regehr behind the likes of Aucoin and Sarich in ice-time is a tad surprising, although he gets next to no PP time and still leads the club in terms of SH ice. Sarich doesn't play on the PP either, but tends to skate with Phaneuf, and Dion gets a lot of time at ES.
Warrener's right where he should be in my humble opinion. He plays the least amount of any defender at ES and only about 1:40 per game on the PK. He's still an Aucoin injury away from getting bumped into the top 4, which makes me nervous, but so far so good.
Eriksson is getting the Giordano/Zyuzin minutes and has managed to be "not detrimental" with them so far - 2 assists, +2. Am I happy with those numbers? Relatively, considering his role. Are those contributions worth $1.5M? Not a chance. If Eriksson continues in this vein, he'll prove to be at least better than Andrea, but a still less than optimal replacement for Giordano. If he falls off, well...
In addition to the above, here's each blueliners "events" thus far:
Phaneuf - 9 GF, 4 GA, +5
Sarich - 4 GF, 8 GA, -4
Aucoin - 6 GF, 6 GA, 0
Regehr - 4 GF, 10 GA, -6
Eriksson - 6 GF, 4 GA, +2
Warrener - 4 GF, 2 GA, +2
I've added up goals for and against across all situations: ES, PK and PP. Like last year, it's plain as day that Regehr is struggling to effectively kill penalties (although Kipper's mediocre SV% sure isn't helping things). I thought a reduction in Warrener's SH icetime and the addition of Sarich would help out Regehr and the ailing penalty kill, but that hasn't happened in the first five games. He and Kipper will need to improve in that area if the Flames are to be any better than average.
At least Phanuef's stats are encouraging. He gets a ton of PP time of course, thus the high GF mark, but he also gets a lot of time at ES and the 3rd most SH time behind Sarich and Regehr. Phaneuf had the highest GA/60 rate on the blueline last year, so it's nice to see him excelling at both ends of the ice early in the season.
Aucoin has come out at evens, with the benefit of middling competition, some PP time and apparently some improvement in play over his first couple gawd awful performances. At $4M per, the Flames will need him to be better than that, but at least there's been some improvement there. Here's hoping it continues and he remains healthy (knock on wood).
