Good time for the Oil to face the Flames if you're from Stinktown: for the first time in awhile, Calgary is decimated by injuries. Not only are Langkow and Bourque down for the count, but Mark Giordano will also be absent this evening due to an "upper body" injury. That means Jim Vandermeer back on the point and minor-leaguer Kyle Greentree slotting in at forward.
That leaves us with these probable combinations:
Bertuzzi-Conroy-Iginla
Cammalleri-Lombardi-Moss
Glencross-Boyd-Nystrom?
Greentree-Prust-Roy? (or empty)
Regehr-Aucoin
Phaneuf-Vandermeer
Sarich-Pardy
That's ugly folks. Do you see a line you'd trust to do the heavy lifting? Me neither.
- It'll be interesting to see what Keenan does with the lines, as the above is just me speculating. Im also semi-excited to see Kyle Greentree's first go in the NHL this year. The big winger leads the QC Flames with 28 goals and is second to only Lundmark in terms of points (50). Even if he's just a capable call-up now and then, I'd say the Flames won the Ramholt-Greentree deal.
- Lots of rumors popping up now that Bourque is porbably done for the regular season. I've heard a lot of mentions of Alexei Kovalev recently, which makes my skin crawl. From Matt's post on Kovalev here, you can see that the guy isn't - and has never been - a good ES player, which is what the Flames will need most now that Bourque is hurt.
Kovalev is a sort of Russian Bertuzzi - he has good puck skills and can be dangerous in certain situations but tends to be a liability otherwise. He isn't very fast, doesn't really play the game with much intensity and prefers the fancy play to the smart one. Trying to hide both him and Bert at ES would become quite the chore.
- The game thread at Flamesnation should be interesting. Both 'Nation' sites will be involved and the result should be some epic trash talking. Head over there to support the relatively few Flames fans, since there's bound to be a deluge of drunk, be-mulleted, semi-literates from up North flooding the place. My own humble contribution to the clash will appear in the big game post.
