I was going to do a rousing, in-depth, pre-game post for the Avs/Flames tilt tonight...but the rest of the Flame-o-sphere seems to have that covered.
So instead, I've chosen to narrow the focus.
During the Wild liveblog, I made a brief mention that I couldn't suss out the match-ups that either coach was pursuing. And for defensible reasons.
Lemaire began the game by shuffling Gaborik through every one of his forward lines. Keenan responded by playing Huselius not at all, moving Vandermeer up-and-down between forward and defense and shifting Nilson from the 1st and 4th lines. It was utter chaos for awhile.
The constant that seemed to emerge from the static was a Lombardi/Gabbers match-up. Since that seemed out of line with Keenan's usual Conroy v. power strategy, I looked it up today to be certain. And, sure enough, there's Lombo taking on Gaborik for a majority of the game. Matthew played about 16 minutes at ES on Saturday night, and spent 10 of them skating against the Wild's primary big gun. For comparison's sake, Conroy saw 3 minutes of Marian that night.
Ten minutes is a significant chunk of time against a legitimate NHL sniper and Lombo did pretty well for himself: even though Gaborik ended up with 2 assists, neither occurred with him on the ice (one vs. Yelle, Conroy and Nilson, the second vs. Iginla, Langkow and Tanguay). In addition, it was Gaborik's unit Lombardi burned for the GWG with a couple minutes to play. Altogether, those are some double-plus good results for the somewhat maligned youngster.
Looking at the shift charts, it's hard to determine whether Keenan or Lemaire was pursuing this Gabbers @ Lombardi strategy. Some of Lombardi's shifts begin just after Gaborik got on the ice and vice versa. Given that the Flames had home-ice advantage and Matthew was tabbed by Keenan to finish off the last minute in the 3rd, Im going to assume it was an Iron Mike initiative. Which leaves me wondering - has Keenan abandoned his Conroy as shut-down center altogether in favor of a Lombo/Yelle shut-down (ie: more traditional 3rd line) strategy? Or was the just an idiosyncratic quirk of that lone contest (Lombardi "playing better", Conroy sick or hurt, etc.).
Whatever the case, I've been encouraged by Lombardi's recent results, despite the fact he hasn't been elevated into a "scoring role", which is something I've ceaselessly wailed about the last couple seasons. Even though Lombardi's not yet in the "top 6", Keenan has employed the speedster a lot recently; particularly in the last week or two where Matthew has frequently been one of the top forwards on the club in terms of total ice-time. He's topped 19+ minutes in each of the last four games, including Saturday night. His 21:53 in ice-time was about 30 seconds more than even Jarome Iginla.
That's heady territory for a guy that was hovering around 12 minutes/night at the same time last seaons, when he was playing like he was a tad...broken and lost. There's been rough patches this season, no question, but this recent upswing in play and responsibility has assuaged many of the fears I had of potential spoilage coming from "mis-use". Matt noted a few weeks ago that Lombardi will probably be a better player for all his trials on the 3rd unit this year. And I think I'm starting to believe him.
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Alrighty then. Flames @ Avs, first place is on the line, clusterf*** division, blah blah blah...
Notables:
- Forsberg in the line-up, Colorado is desperate having lost 4 in a row and Oilers fans will be forced to cheer for us (HA!). Course, we're obliged to cheer for them, given that they're facing the Wild this evening, but, that doesn't completely quell my resultant glee.
- The Avs will be lacking the injured Adam Foote, the Flames the Boogered Mark Smith. Expect one of Nystrom or Boyd to draw in for the Mark, leaving Keenan's new Marcus Nilson (David Moss) out in the cold. Expect Hale to be joining him.
- It'll be interesting to see who Lombardi faces tonight and how much Juice gets to play. I doubt Lombardi sees much of Sakic, even granting his relative success against Gaborik, but you never know. I also assume Huselius will remain on strict PP duty until things go pear-shaped and/or the Flames lose. Why mess with success, right?
Prediction - I don't shell out the $13 for the PPV and spend the night huddled close to a radio with a bottle of booze in my hand and a ready curse on my tongue.
Go Flames!
