Welcome to the first PLAYOFF Fire Drill, for this, Calgary’s first postseason game on April 16, 2009

The Calgary Flames (the fifth seed in the West) and the Chicago Blackhawks (the fourth seed).

6:30 p.m. Mountain time and 8:30 p.m. Eastern time. All other time zones should derive while they derive.

United Center, Chicago, Illinois.

Calgary was 19-20-2 away from home this year, and failed to win a game against Chicago this season. The Blackhawks were 24-9-8 at the United Center and beat Calgary 11-3 on aggregate there in two games.

Similarity — Calgary hasn’t played Chicago since Feb. 5, in a 5-2 loss at the Saddledome. Since then, the Blackhawks have gone 17-11-4, and the Flames went 16-13-2. That’s almost enough to give you hope for a Flames win. Almost. (Of course, the Flames also played 15 playoff teams in those 31 games compared to the Blackhawks 18 in 32, so they did have a slightly easier schedule.)

Martin Havlat — Gets hurt all the time, but isn’t hurt now. It strikes me as an incredibly inconsiderate thing to do to us Calgary fans that have had to sit through this malarkey of late.

Patrick Kane — I remember when he first started wrestling in the WWF and he was so mean to his brother the Undertaker and he chokeslammed a bunch of midgets and he would make all the lights go out and fire came out of the ringposts. It was very frightening.

Jonathan Toews — Stop making these horrible faces:

Kris Versteeg — Girls’ name.

Brian Campbell — You’ve never seen a worse defenseman making SO much money. I’d say he’s the poor man’s Mike Green, but he’s much, much richer than Mike Green (for now at least).

Andrew Ladd — Nice shirt:

Dave Bolland — Wanna-be ninja.

Patrick Sharp — He went to the University of Vermont. I have my own reasons for disliking that place, believe you me.

Duncan Keith — What kind of a name is Duncan? He is not a yo-yo magnate.

Nikolai Khabibulin — Drinks a “sports drink” meant for toddlers/probably cheated in 2004.

Sami Pahlsson — Former Duck. I don’t like Ducks.

Joel Quenneville — The mustache!

You know why! Enjoy the game and talk to eachother about the impending horror in the comments section.