It's pouring in from all sides now. TSN ranked the Flames 30th in the league in their "power rankings" recently. ESPN had a brief "blame Keenan" blurb on their site the other day. And now that we're at the 1/4 mark, other more in-depth indictments of the underachieving Flames are coming out of the woodwork.
Bruce Dowbiggen, who has forever favored a doom and gloom perspective when it comes to the Flames, chooses to eschew skewering Keenan and instead points the finger at Darryl Sutter's handiwork:
In particular, the evolution of Sutter's defence begs the question of whether the former coach has been paying attention to the workings of the new NHL. The model NHL defenceman of the no-obstruction era is predicated on speed. That is, a player who can skate well or, if his skating is less than perfect, a player who can pass the puck well enough to key a speedy breakout from the defensive zone...
So how do the Flames rate? They have the dynamic but erratic Dion Phaneuf and a fine defensive defenceman in Robyn Regehr.
After that, mobility and puck moving falls off drastically.
Adrian Aucoin, Rhett Warrener, Cory Sarich, David Hale and Anders Eriksson are neither particularly quick nor very good passers. Follow a Flames game and watch the trouble they have escaping the defensive zone. Scouts are advising opposing teams to pressure the Flames' defence to create turnovers.
I hasten to add that Regehr, with all his defensive acumen, is hardly a puck mover himself. The Flames are very obviously a bad transition team. They have a lot of trouble moving the puck out of their own zone and/or hitting the forwards in stride with a pass in the neutral zone.
Coming from Bruce, it's not a bad article. He highlights many of issues I've brought up around here: Sutter's "tried and true vet" strategy is inefficient from a cap perspective and has burdened the roster with expensive, sunset contracts, making it that much more difficult to instigate any sort of adaptations in light of the teams struggles. Dowbiggen overstates his case a tad by ignoring or reducing the effect that Regehr's and Kipper's struggles have had on Calgary's record, but that doesn't mean his argument is without merit.
Scotty Bowman was recently interviewed by Tony Gallagher, and he re-iterates Dowbiggen's claims regarding the Flames back-end:
"Ottawa has a surprisingly good defence, they're underrated. Those guys move the puck pretty (well) on the power play. They're the new style defencemen, I call them.
"The big guy who can't move the puck is useless now because he can't grab or push guys.
"Look at Calgary. Their defence, they're not that good and I think Mike [Keenan] has got those guys paired wrong. He's playing [Dion] Phaneuf with [Adrian] Aucoin. He had Aucoin in Vancouver and he had a great year for him but that was a long time ago. He's not that good anymore. I'd play [Robyn] Regehr with Phaneuf."
Im not sure I agree with him on the Regehr/Phaneuf stuff, but, when Scotty Bowman calls out your blueline as "not very good", it's time to sit up and take notice. The sad part is, the Flames have nowhere to go with this group in the near future: Aucoin, Eriksson and Warrener are all signed though next season (at least). Dion Phaneuf is on the verge of getting a massive raise and Robyn Regehr's cap-hit doubles starting next year when his extension kicks in. Calgary's back-end is poised to get one year older, one year slower (for guys like Warrener, Eriksson and Aucoin) and about 7M more expensive. That means a 21M back-end - approx 35-40% of the cap, depending - on a group of 7 players that "isn't very good".
Tough times ahead. And Im not just talking about the Flames chances of success in 07/08.
