News and Notes – March 11 2014

There are no games today for your Calgary Flames. But the team did have an optional practice, which has heavily skewed towards the younger players in terms of attendance. With a bit of a slower day around here, why not a quick run-through of what’s going on.

Good news! Curtis Glencross and Kevin Westgarth are playing on Wednesday. Also good news: Tyler Wotherspoon is basically fine and will also (probably) play, according to coach Bob Hartley. This possibly means someone like Ben Hanowski will get scratched. That’s just a guess, though.

Other guys hurt include (deep breath):

For the curious, Michael Ferland is in town and was seen at the ‘Dome. My guess is he was checking in with team doctors following his knee surgery. If he’s smart, he’ll be doing what Lance Bouma was doing last year and living in the video room as much as he can. Ferland has the exact skill-set (big, mean and mobile) that te Flames desperately need.

The folks over at Hockey’s Future have updated their Flames top 20 prospect rankings. While I admit that I’m not crazy about their arbitrary ranking and projection system, I’m always interested in what they have to say. Here’s their top 10 (full list here):

First question: Where’s Markus Granlund? (He’s 14th). I’m also not 100% sold on Reinhart or Jankowski being that high. Granted, when I rank prospects, I treat it as if I’m picking teams in shinny – I just want the guy who’s going to be the best for my team, not necessarily the guy who’s best now. Jankowski definitely has a lot of potential, but Reinhart arguably has the highest “floor.” Also, given how much he’s torn up the Q, Poirier is probably too low.

Needless to say, it’s nice that the Flames finally have some depth. Our buddy Jonathan Willis ranked the 30 NHL teams by prospect pool over at Bleacher Report. He ranked Calgary 8th, which shocked even him, but Calgary’s lack of defensive prospects (outside of maybe Tyler Wotherspoon) is a spot of concern.

By the by, we’ve begun the process for the hotly-debated Flames 15 for this coming year. The wonderous Justin Azevedo is spear-heading it again. I’m excited to see who moves up and who moves down.

You laughed as poor Eddie Lack gave up seven goals in the third period of last night’s epic 7-4 Canucks collapse, didn’t you? I feel bad for some of the players, but the Canucks are resembling the late Darryl Sutter Flames more and more with each passing day.

And it’s sad, because the Canucks were easily Canada’s best shot over the past decade at winning a Stanley Cup, yet they just couldn’t get the job done – whether because of luck, injuries or occasionally downright dumb roster moves. I can see why that fanbase would be as frustrated as they seem to be now.