It's been an ugly start to the season. Going 1-4 hurts, particularly when it's against hated divisional rivals. The goaltending has been bad, the defensive play has been bad and the goalscoring always seems to come up one short. And let's not talk about the constantly-losing-two-goal-leads thing.
Problems -
Even-strength play
Who could have seen this coming? Well, anyone that was paying attention. Calgary only has 8 ES goals in five games played, which ranks them below teams like ATL, CBJ and, yes, even the incredibly snake-bitten Anaheim Ducks.
The problem is grossly exaggerated with Iginla putting on his best Jarmoe act, unfortunately. The Flames have precisely one proven ES performer up front and the guy is complete bunk right now. His 1.48 ESP/60 rate is deplorable and he's getting outscored to the tune of 4.41 G/60 at 5on5. Only Brandon Prust and Wayne Primeau are getting scored on at a greater rate so far. It's only five games in and things can't possibly go this bad forever for Jarome...but even in the short term that's a terrible run for the Captain. I doubt he had any similarly bad 5 game stretches last year (or in recent memory). He tends to be a streaky scorer for sure, but he's rarely a defensive liability.
Of course, part of the problem is the random casting about of Mike Keenan, who continues to struggle to figure out match-ups and line combinations now that Tanguay isn't around to anchor a "checking" unit. Which is why we see Conroy getting bumped to play with Iginla on the road: Keenan figures Jarome's going to see the tough match-ups away from the Dome so he puts Conroy out there to center him (because Conroy's the only center than take the rough going on the Flames...in Keenan's head, at least). The funny part about that is the Conroy/Iginla pairing has proven to be catastrophically bad, with Conroy doing his best headless chicken thing in the defensive zone. He lost his check twice more in Edmonton this weekend, with both mistakes ending up in goals against. Same thing happened on opening night in Vancouver.
The problem is, Keenan doesn't have faith in anyone else to do the dirty work against the big guns. It's hard to blame him though - every other forward on the roster (aside from Glencross and Bourque) got beat up at ES last year to one degree or another. Conroy held his head above water, but Im starting to think more and more that had a lot more to do with Tanguay than anything else. Plus, the guy is 37 years old. Diminishing returns and all that.
The goaltending
The defense has been sub-par so far, that's for sure. But Kipper looks like a golfer that's lost his swing to me. He is panicky and prone to scrambling in net. He gives up juicy rebounds. He loses his angle a lot. Pucks tends to dribble through him even when he stops them. He can't seem to recover with any sort of speed or grace (see the Oilers 2nd goal from Saturday night for an example).
Unlike Jarome, however, Im not sure how or if Kipper will recover. Iginla has been outstanding for two straight seasons now. Kipper has been getting progressively worse. Hiccup or death spiral? We'll find out soon enough.
Blocking shots revisited
I talked about the Flames lack of shot blocking earlier this month. The gist was:
1.) The Flames block less shots relative to league average.
2.) Blocking shots is (probably) beneficial, due to the whole "less shots on net" thing.
Calgary was blocking about 26% of the shots being directed at their net per game last year. An increase to the league average of 29% probably would have saved them between 1 and 10 goals against by the end of the season.
So far, the Flames have blocked 53 shots in 5 games and allowed 148 shots on net. So Blks/shots+blks = 201/53 = 26%, meaning the Flames are right in line with last year's output. I would really like to see that number go up, particularly with the ghost of Roman Turek tending the crease.
Silver lining (?) -
It really isn't all bad. Bertuzzi has been so surprisingly good that even I'm praising him (although the stupid penalties need to go away). Im also fairly impressed with Cammalleri and Bourque so far, while Langkow actually leads the team in scoring despite the crappy play of Jarome (and the Conroy yo-yo).
Also, the Calgary seems to be spending a large amount of time in the right end of the rink, which can't be said for, say, Tampa Bay. If they can keep that up, the bounces are likely to start favoring them, especially if one or both of Kipper and Iginla can get their mojo back.
