Did you know Sidney Crosby is just 20 years old? And that there's a media frenzy everywhere he goes? And that he handles said frenzy with maturity and aplomb?? Oh, and he's really good at hockey too?
Well, I did. In fact, I knew that before the Crosby circus arrived in Calgary. But, just in case I didn't (or in case I have the memory of a goldfish) the local media has ensured my awareness by ceaselessly reiterating the above points these past few days.
Ugh.
Anyways, yes, Sid the Kid's in town for the first time tonight. More importantly, the Flames have an opportunity to take advantage of a road weary opponent and they desperately need to string a couple wins together. The Pens are a mediocre squad with average goaltending at best and a so-so blueline corps. Like the Flames, they've also had to deal with a couple players who are struggling to justify their sunset contracts (Roberts, Recchi, Sydor) while some of their youngsters have taken a step backwards as well (Staal, Armstrong, Christensen). The Pens are a +1 squad at ES while the Flames, despite their struggles, are +7 5 on 5. Predictability, Pittsburgh tends to make hay on the PP, where they've scored 27 goals to the Flames 19.
Meaning Calgary should avoid a special teams battle like the plague. The PK has improved slightly over the last few weeks, but not enough to regularly confront a Gonchar-Crosby-Malkin PP unit and expect any real measure of success. Unfortunately, Crosby is one of the best in the league at drawing penalties (while the Flames are one of the most undisciplined clubs in the league), so staying out of the sin bin may be a tall order...
I assume Regehr+partner (Aucoin?) and the Iginla forward unit will get the Crosby assignment tonight. Im pretty comfortable with that, particularly considering that Crosby isn't the ES player that Iggy is (yet) and Regehr is slowly becoming the snarly stalwart we all expected. Evgeni Malkin scores almost as much as Crosby at ES, but also tends to bleed GA, so he's not as worrisome. Im guessing he'll see a lot of Phaneuf this evening.
It's difficult to predict the Flames forward trios for this game. I assume Langkow and Huselius will stick with Iggy, but beyond that it's a total guessing game. Tanguay played just 11 minutes last game and he played with everybody. Ditto Dustin Boyd, who tends to draw two shifts with Godard/Smith for every one shift he gets with...whoever else. Lombardi was primarily deployed with Nystrom and Nolan against the Blues, while Conroy seemed to bounce between lines 2 and 4 pretty regularly. Tanguay, Conroy and Nolan began the St. Louis game as the de facto "2nd line", but, as Keenan no doubt realized, playing a set-up man of Tanguay's caliber with a couple of stone-hands like Nolan and Connie is like casting pearls before swine. An open net is basically a Medusa's gaze to those two.
So...who knows. I think I'd like to see Boyd move up with Tanguay a bit more: run them against soft opposition whenever possible and see what results. Boyd's played well against the lesser lights thus far, even when he's skated with lesser lights himself. It can't hurt to play him with some talent, particularly at home where match-ups can be controlled. I think it'd be a worthy experiment, but I doubt it'll happen. Wishful thinking I guess.
Anyways, short form - if Calgary can minimize their PIM, I like their chances.
Go Flames.
UPDATE - It's being reported at the Flames Insider that Yelle is still on the shelf and Aucoin is sick with a cold but will play anyways. Also, the practice lines today were:
Huselius-Langkow-Iginla
Tanguay-Conroy-Nilson
Nystrom-Lombardi-Nolan
Smith-Boyd-Godard
Phaneuf-Hale
Regehr-Eriksson
Sarich-Aucoin
Pardy
I can only hope the bolded duo were a "practice only" pairing. The thought of Crosby skating in on Anders Eriksson all night is a frightening one (actually, Im arguing against myself here...I suggested a few days ago that Regehr should be babysitting Eriksson. But that was before I thought Reggie would be seeing Crosby duty).
