Breaking Down The Remaining Schedule

9 years ago

After last night’s triumph over the Arizona Coyotes, the Calgary Flames have a 23-18-3 record in 44 games. 38 games remain in the 2014-15 season.

As you can see here, the schedule isn’t horrible.

THE PACIFIC

The Flames have at least a game remaining against each of their divisional foes:

Three each against San Jose, Anaheim and Los Angeles
Two against Edmonton
One each against Vancouver and Arizona

Calgary’s record right now against their own division is 12-3-1. And, as good teams need to do, they’ve won all of the games against the division’s bottom-feeders, Arizona and Edmonton. But I think it’s safe to say that the remaining 13 games in the division will ultimately determine whether the Flames are working into mid-April or not.

Nice touch though: the games in the Pacific are evenly split between home and away games (seven home, six away), and the Flames have no back-to-backs in the division. This is probably as favourable as a schedule gets.

THE CENTRAL

The Flames have a dozen games remaining against the rest of the West. They’re 5-4-0 against the Central so far.

Three games against Minnesota
Two each against Winnipeg, Colorado, St. Louis and Dallas
One more against Nashville

The Flames haven’t played Minnesota at all, and given the Wild’s goaltending woes, it might be a good place to pick up points. The rough part here is this: Calgary faces both Colorado and Dallas in the back end of back-to-backs (on the road). Granted, the Flames have been fairly sharp in back-to-backs, but that’s tough sledding nonetheless.

THE EAST

The Flames have 13 games remaining against the remainder of the league. They’re 6-11-2 against the East so far. (That’s gotta change if they wish to be a playoff team.)

Two each against Boston and Philadelphia
One each against Buffalo, Pittsburgh, the Rangers, New Jersey, the Islanders, Detroit, Ottawa, Toronto and Columbus.

The schedule is skewed towards the road side, with six home and seven away games against the East. The Flames also have two back-to-backs, and face both Detroit and New Jersey in the back-end of back-to-backs.

TRIPS

The Flames have two big road trips left after this trip is over and we hit the All-Star Break.

A seven-game trek during the Brier, where the Flames play all seven remaining road games they have against the East. They have two sets of back-to-backs during that trip.
At the end of March, they have a five-game trip through the Central Division (and Edmonton).

The flip-side of that is that Calgary has a bunch of long-ish homestands between now and the end of the season – including a six-gamer, a five-gamer and a four-gamer.

SUM IT UP

There’s 38 games remaining and the schedule is both favourable and well-structured. The Calgary Flames very much have their playoff destiny in their hands.