Welcome to the Game Day Fire Drill, for this, Calgary’s 32nd game of the season on Dec. 13, 2009.

The bad news is that Calgary’s offense has obviously dried up.

Scoring eight goals in the last five games isn’t exactly a recipe for anything resembling success and so it’s a good thing the Flames are playing Colorado because they’ve allowed… four goals in their last four games? Oh hell.

As Jean pointed out the other day, things look really, really bleak up front. The power play sucks, is one problem. No goals yet in December and we’re nearly halfway through it. And forget the lack of secondary scoring (something I feared in the offseason), there hasn’t been even primary scoring.

And now they have to play the once-again-stingy Avalanche for temporary control of the Northwest division and hope they start conceding five goals a game again. The only hope, and I’m not exactly holding out for this to come true is that MAYBE Miikka Kiprusoff can steal one here. Colorado may not be as dire in attack as the Minnesota Wild, but they sure are capable of just not showing up for a night or two (they’ve scored once in their last two games, against Minnesota and Tampa, both in Denver).

Well that’s just great.

The Calgary Flames (19-8-4 for 42 points. Tied for third in the West, first in the Northwest) and the Colorado Avalanche (18-10-6 for 42 points. Tied for third in the West, first in the Northwest).

6 p.m. Mountain time and 8 p.m. Eastern time. All other time zones should have a "pretty good time."

Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado.

Calgary is 11-3-3 on the road this year, but haven’t beaten Colorado this season. The Avs are 8-3-2 at home, which nicely offsets their 10-7-4 road record.

Peter Budaj — Remember when this guy was really, really bad? Not so much now. Even after a dismal start, he’s played so well of late that his stats have improved to a 2.37 GAA and a .920 save percentage. What is this world coming to when you can’t even expect a decent offensive performance against Peter Budaj?

Paul Stastny — Like Adrian Aucoin before him, he is the leading name bandied about when the subject of the overall usefulness of wood sticks comes up. "ONLY THIRTY-SEVEN BUCKS" yeah we know.

Darcy Tucker — Oh like you need an explanation for this one.

Because this is going to end well. Enjoy the game and fight back tears in the comments section.