The Flames have slain a few dragons recently in their quest to stay afloat in the WC play-off picture. A couple extra-time victories, the defeat of the usually Flame-retardent Nashville Predators, etc.
Tonight they meet an equally daunting opponent in the Minnesota Wild. Winners of 9 straight, the Wild (along the Canucks and, somehow, the Avalanche) have been one of the NHL's hottest teams in the last 2 months. Since February 3rd, Minny has lost only 3 games in regulation and 3 more in overtime or shoot-outs. That's an 18-3-3 record for those of you counting. During that impressive run, the Wild's GD has ballooned to an impressive +34, driven mainly by their usual strong defensive acumen (177 GA, #1 in the league) as well as a healthy and scoring Marian Gaborik. For his part, Gaborik has been positively December-version-Iginla-like in the second half of the season, particularly over the last month. During March, Gabbers has gathered 8 goals and 17 points (and a +14 rating!) in just 12 games. Scary.
Course, the real reason the Wild are a true threat these days is because they're not just a one trick pony anymore. "Trap and hope" is no longer their forte (though the trap part hasn't been lost). After Gaborik, Minnesota has a strong compliment of secondary firepower, including Pavol Demitra (25 goals, 64 points), Brian Rolston (31 goals, 62 points), PM Bouchard (19 goals, 55 points) and the emergent Mikko Koivu (19 goals, 51 points). Top it all off with the near Kiprusoffian-revelation that is Niklas Backstrom (who has allowed no more than 2 GA in his last 5 starts) in net and it's plain to see there are no easy points to be had this evening. And I haven't even mentioned the intractable will standing behind the bench directing it all...
Going into the season, I was most worried about the Wild in terms of NW Division opponents. They seemed to be pretty good at almost everything last season even though they failed to make the play-offs. After adding a couple of key pieces (Demitra, Johnsson, Parrish) in the off-season, the Wild appeared, to me at least, to be on the brink of a break-out year. Course, by December I'd thought perhaps I'd overestimated Minnesota, but in the face of their second half tear, it's hard not to take them very, very seriously. Even in light of the fact they gather so many victories through OT and the S/O. Consider that they have a top 10 PP, the 2nd best PK and have allowed the 6th least amount of GA at ES.
So given that the Wild might currently be the best team in the NW Division (if not the league) and that Gaborik is probably one of the hottest players, my true fears for this evening center around the wily Lemaire finding ways to get the Walz/Gaborik/Demitra line out against the Flames lesser lights (Warrener/Hale - Lombo/Primeau/Ritchie) as often as possible. I would expect Playfair will have to shelter that 4th line quite a bit seeing as Rolston's line will also be pretty dangerous. Im guessing Lombardi and company will end up with 8 minutes of ice or less by the end of the night (depending on special teams work). Although, considering the ineffective manner in which Iginla's been operating at ES lately, Lemaire could probably go power vs. power this evening as far as line matching goes and still come out on top. Blech.
As I said, no easy points tonight. If Kipper lets another early stinker by or if the defensive zone coverage in any way resembles prior road trips, the Flames will no doubt end up on the losing end. As it is, I think I'll predict an OT loss.
Flames 2, Wild 3. Langkow and Friesen for Calgary. Gaborik, Koivu and Rolston for Minnesota. One point's better than nothing, right?
GO FLAMES!
