Sometimes contributor Madmac and I attended a Flames game together last season. It was an early season home game against the San Jose Sharks, their first visit to the Dome that year.
The Flames ended up playing horribly, looking equal parts disinterested and confused. The Sharks easily built up a 4-0 lead on the strength of two PP goals and coasted to a 4-1 victory. Calgary managed to salvage an iota of pride by spoiling Nabokov's shut-out in the last few minutes of the 3rd.
Last night, sometimes contributor Madmac and I attended a Flames game together. It was an early season game, the Shark's first visit to the Dome. As for the rest - see above.
You'd think we would have learned our lesson from last year. Sigh.
(Calgary is now oh-fer five with me in the building this season. Soon, the mere mention of Flames tickets is going to evoke in me a feeling of disgust and nausea in true Pavlovian fashion.)
I'll leave aside any sort of analysis with the assumption that last night's game was no in way indicative of future performances from this club. Just one of those evenings where no one wearing red really had his head in the game.
Not that there weren't other forces working against the team. With the score 0-0 in the middle of the first, a linesman made the mystifying decision to blow the play dead in the middle of a Jarome Iginla break-away. Why you ask? Poor JR wasn't feeling too hot after a Robyn Regehr hit. And Im not just employing rhetoric to downplay the level of Roenick's injury when I say "not too hot" - he wasn't down on the ice and he wasn't rolling around in agony. He was leaned up against the boards. He skated to the bench under his own power and he played the very next shift.
It wasn't only stupid to stop play for a temporarily dazed player, it was AGAINST THE RULES. From the NHL rulebook:
When a player is injured so that he cannot continue play or go to his bench, the play shall not be stopped until the injured player's Team has secured possession of the puck; if the player's Team is in possession of the puck at the time of injury, play shall be stopped immediately unless his Team is in a scoring position.
(NOTE) In the case where it is obvious that a player has sustained a serious injury, the Referee and/or Linesman may stop the play immediately.
In this case, the "injured" player's Team most certainly did not have possession of the puck. Of course, the decision to stop play would have been defensible if Roenick had clearly been greviously injured (as per the note), but, as I mention above, there was no reason to come to that conclusion. Absolutely bush league officiating.
Can't say whether the lost break-away had any kind of significant effect on the game or not. It came on the heels of a disallowed Godard goal and seemed to completely take the wind out of the Flames sails. They were penalized shortly thereafter and the Sharks scored the first of their 4 unanswered markers (assisted by Roenick, of course). The let-down was apparent and the club lost their legs for the rest of the night. Naturally, there's a chance that Iginla wouldn't have scored and the Flames would have staggered to the 4-1 loss anyways, so one can't complain too loudly.
Oh well. Onwards and Upwards.
