Nothing major to discuss in Flames land right now, so here's some of the news and views about the team making the rounds on the interwebs.
- Matt digs through the Flames corsi numbers and finds that Langkow is driving the bus. Iginla is struggling, in contrast, mostly when he plays with...wait for it...Craig Conroy!
- The 2009 Canadian Junior team roster was set over the weekend. Flames prospect Keith Aulie made the club. Congratulations Keith! Other Flames picks in the tourny include Mitch Wahl (US) and Mikael Backlund (Sweden). John Negrin and Greg Nemisz weren't invited to camp this year (boooooooooo).
- Curtis Glencross is hurt and probably won't be making the trip with the team. That is bad news for the Flames - Glencross and Bourque have been kicking some major ass from the "third line" recently. They, with Matthew Lombardi, were probably the best trio versus Florida the other night. The silver lining is Boyd gets to move back up I suppose.
The question is, who gets the call up? Warren Peters? Jamie Lundmark (leading QC in points)? Kyle Greentree (leading QC in goals)? Kris Chucko (shudder)?
- Mike Keenan is starting to trust Adam Pardy a bit more:
"Against Detroit, we had Robyn (Regehr) up against Hossa quite a bit," Keenan said. "I had a chance to send Robyn out there against Hossa, but instead chose Adam.
"He turned around to me and gave me a look when I did it. I said, 'You go stop him now.' It was a good opportunity for him to learn more about his own ability and how to stop top players.
"He had a great shift and it helped his confidence."
I think Pardy has been pretty good since his terrible outing in Montreal. His game against Florida was particularly sound. His ES number according to behind the net are fairly strong (1.85 GAON/60, +15.4), which is all you can really ask of the kid.
- A paradox: Not a single flames player has a negative corsi rating, but only two of them are positive in terms of GF/GA (Glencross and Bourque). Calgary has the puck going in the right direction, clearly, but that's not showing up in goal differential. Does that challenge the utility of the corsi metric or is the team suffering through bad luck/bad goaltending?
- The Flames now have the 5th best PK (85.2%) in the league and the 12th best PP (19%). If they could get their 5on5 house in order, they could be a pretty damn good squad. Assuming the special teams results have some sustain to them, of course.
