I apologize for the title.
Anyways, the Flames head out to St. Louis to face the Blues again today. With losses in their last three games, attention is swinging back towards the clubs current deficiencies. One of which is the power play.
Despite sitting 12th overall in the league, the Flames PP has looked awful recently. How awful? In comments to the Washington Post, Bruce Boudreau noted:
"Over the past month, we've been at a pretty consistent rate," he said. "If anything, we've tried to shoot the puck more. Nine times out of 10, when you're struggling, it's because you're trying to make the perfect play. Most power play goals start with a shot and a rebound and then something pops out. That's usually what happens. You can't prepare for a shot when you don't know where the rebound is going."
The Flames are the other 10% right now. They aren't struggling because they are forcing plays - hell, they aren't even able to set up in the zone to attempt plays. Puck distribution in the neutral zone is inaccurate while puck retrieval whenever it's shot in is nearly non-existent. The players don't even seem to know if, how or when to carry versus dump the puck during the man advantage. Unfortunately, the rare times the Flames do get a hold of the biscuit in the offensive zone, they end up hurriedly rimming it around the boards like a pee-wee team, resulting in time consuming board battles (many of which they lose) or sloppy, panicked plays limited to the perimeter.
That's the way it's seemed to my eye lately anyways. Bloody groan worthy stuff.
If the club can't markedly improve at ES (still awaiting the Jarome awakening on that front) then the special teams are going to have to drive a positive GD. So far, so good with the PK. The PP was pretty damn good to start the year too, especially with Bertuzzi shooting at 27%. That's not happening anymore, though. As noted, nothing really is.
To be honest, this is another area of the game where Iginla could probably improve, although his short-comings relative to last year certainly aren't massive. He's operating at 4.23 PPP/60 so far, which is "good" although around the rate one would expect a capable PP blueliner to manage rather than an elite forward. Last season, he was a team best 5.37 for comparison sake.
What's perhaps more damning is the fact that the difference between Iggy's GFON and GFOFF rates is nominal: 6.81-6.11 = 0.7 goals/60 minute. That is positively miniscule compared to his differential from last year (5.31), when he was clearly the one driving results with the man advantage.
To be fair, Calgary's second PP unit last season was putrid - perhaps worst in the league - making up a large amount of the difference. Still, Iggy has the smallest differential of any of the other "first unit" guys this year (Langkow, Bertuzzi, Cammalleri, Phaneuf) and even lags behind a couple of "second unit" players (Glencross and Moss) although sample size in an issue in the latter comparison.
Still, a player of Iginla's caliber should be way out in front by these metrics. He gets lots of time with the teams best players on the PP and is an obvious and proven offensive contributor. While it's probably unfair to say he's been bad on the PP so far, that doesn't mean he couldn't stand to improve some.
Other stuff:
- Glencross out (curses!) Boyd moves up (I assume) and the rumor is that Lundmark has been recalled. Im actually rather interested to see how Chucko and Greentree do in Lundmark's absence on the farm. By all accounts, the two big wingers have been carried by Lundmark's strong play and their stats may be inflated as a result. If Jamie spends any amount of time with the big club, it'll be instructive to see if one or both fall away from their current PPG paces (0.89 for Greentree, 0.79 for Chucko).
- Iginla is having a tough time at ES and his PP performance could be better, but...at least he's drawing a lot of penalties.
- The only Blues player scoring right now is BJ Crombeen......Who?
- Bertuzzi was in court yesterday, dealing with the Moore civil suit. Will this help or hurt his efforts to end his 17 game goalless drought I wonder?
- Im not sure what the lines will be tonight, but I liked Robert's proposed units from the prior post:
Bourque-Langkow-Iginla
power vs. power
Lombardi-Conroy-Moss
second toughs
Cammalleri-Boyd-Bertuzzi
Softer matchups, and be rigorous about it. Like Randy Carlyle in 06/07 with the Getzlaf line rigorous.
?(Lundmark)-Nystrom-Roy
10 ES shifts max. Nystrom gets some extra time on the PK.
Makes sense to me. That said, Im sure we'll see Conroy up with Iggy again, even though it's pretty clear that doesn't work worth a damn.
Prediction - The slide continues. Blues 3, Flames 2. Goals by Boyd and Langkow for Calgary. Perron, Tkachuk and Backes for St. Louis.
