Tuesday, January 8, 2008

flames v. coyotes postgame: skating is good

i will not take anything away from the product that wayne gretzky (and ulf samuelsson !!) put on the ice tonight, but the flames looked like they were still on hiatus. "flat-footed" was the word uttered extensively around me in section 201, but i'd go one step further. "disinterested," i'd say. "bored," even.

i've spent a large part of the last few months wailing about the existance of conroy on the first line and tonight was no different. every time he had the puck in a scoring position, my dad would catch his breath a bit --hoping for a goal. i didn't waste my time. i knew conroy infront was as much of a threat as the puck magnets that play at centre ice between periods...

i've also spent some time bitching about nolan on the second line, and again he proved tonight that this is not gonna work out. the most glorious scoring opportunity fell to his stick, a gaping net and flailing bryzagalov. nolan put it wide.... twice. stonehands, nothing. these guys are simply OVER.

MG posits that lombardi, perhaps, should be centering tanguay and.... boyd (?) and from the onset of the game [but mostly when things started to go badly], i was stating the same. the good news is that lombo got a shot with tangs (and nolan) in the last minutes of the third, when the game was essentially over. 'course, mark smith got a shot with langkow in the same time period, so i'm not at all hopeful that this combination will stick. but if keenan can guiltlessly bench nilson and primeau, then he should be able to demote both conroy and nolan to the third line, where (like MG says) they might actually prove to be effective.

i won't go into the mathematics of it all, i'll just point out that the current lineup makes no sense. at the risk of offending a veteran, i think keenan et al. need to take a hard look at the roles they are expecting out of everyone outside iggy and juice and make some changes (i will not include langkow in this, since i think he can be considered secondary scoring, over the past month, as he's been largely on the second line)...

huselius/langkow/iginla
tanguay/lombardi/boyd
nystrom/conroy/nolan
"minutes"/yelle/whoever you want (godard, moss, primeau --i don't really care).

while i'm not hating keenan at all, i'm curious about some of his choices (see above). on the first phoenix goal, the redshirts on the ice were smith, yelle, godard, hale & warrener. i told my pops there would be a goal about 10 seconds before the goal. there is no way that the five worst flames players should ever be on the ice at the same time, if you ask me. this was, by the way, not following an icing or in the midst of some kind of strange line change. terrible call.

and lastly: jovo's a pussy.

4 comments:

Kent W. said...

Actually, the first PHX goal came against Dion, Eriksson and the big guns (Jarome, Huselius and Langkow). That was good coaching by Keenan - he had the big boys out against the Winnik and Kapanen line, which should be a favorable miss match.

You know you're going to lose when those types of match-ups go the wrong way - In fact, Iginla got scored on twice at ES, which is astonishing considering he's been kicking the crap out of everyone he's seen recently.

walkinvisible said...

hm.... maybe they didn't actually score. maybe it was just a really good scoring chance that miikka saved....

and i'm not even DRINKING this month !! ;)

Kent W. said...

I think I know what you're talking about. There was a play where Hale/Warrener and the 4th line boobs were out against Doans line. I also said "what the hell kind of match-up is that? how does that happen?" at the time.

Anonymous said...

Y'know what, now that I think about it, that whole game sucked, and it was completely appropriate that both Nystrom and Eriksson got smacked in the face with the puck. BOOOO!