FGD: Into the Fire
Kent Wilson
February 02 2013 02:51PM
A lot of consternation in Flamesland after the 6-3 loss to the Avs on Thursday, but from my angle the team has exceeded expectations from many angles through the early going. The results aren't there and the goaltending has been *ahem* questionable, but the club has made a habit of outchancing and outshooting their opponents so far. With a few different bounces and an NHL-average Kipper, the Flames have a much better set of W-L numbers heading into tonight.
Sorting Out the Flames Blueline
Kent Wilson
January 31 2013 11:02AM
When Calgary signed Dennis Wideman in the off-season, it resulted in a lot of buzz around a potential Jay Bouwmeester trade. Not only because JayBo is much maligned for not being worth his contract since arriving, but also because it meant the Flames had a lot of defensemen.
With the addition of Wideman, the retention of Sarich and the promotion of TJ Brodie, Calgary has no less than 9 NHL ready bodies, eight of whom also boast one way contracts. Brett Carson is one of them and currently plying his trade for Abbotsford, but with the news that Anton Babchuk is rapidly nearing a return, the club is facing the possibility of having 8 NHLers on the parent club.
Flames Scoring Chance Totals So Far
Kent Wilson
January 30 2013 10:45AM
- Image courtesy Hockey By Design
As you all may know, we continue to count scoring chances here at FN as we have the last couple of years. The handy application we used in the past is currently down, so instead we have taken to excel spreadsheets to get the work done. It makes for less detailed analysis because we can't get differentials for individual players, but some information is better than nothing.
I started on game 2, so there is only three games of data so far.
Flames 5 Early Season Surprises
Kent Wilson
January 29 2013 08:44AM
Four Games isn't enough for anyone to be engaging in any sort of meaningful analysis unfortunately. Let's put it this way, in the past I had counted 10-game samples where Matthew Lombardi led the team in possession rate. I always had a soft spot for Lombo, but he was never the best forward on this team at any point during his tenure here.
As noted previously, weird stuff is going to happen in small bursts, especially early in the seaason. With that caveat noted, here's some of the surprises that have emerged from the Flames first 10 days of 2013.
Jets Nation Casting Call
Kent Wilson
January 28 2013 11:19AM
So NHL hockey is back and every nation site is rocking with tons of daily content, comments, arguments and the odd terrible MS paint picture or photoshop.
Every site, that is, except for the baby in the network: JetsNation.
I convinced Wanye to buy JetsNation.ca and develop the site as soon as they announced a team would be returning to Winnipeg because, hey! Opportunity! I figured it would be easy to track down tons of shiny new excited bloggers and that JetsNation would be bigger than the Beatles in no time.
