Starlight

So previously we have examined the defense, goaltending and
established forwards for the Flames this coming season. You can read about the
forwards here and the defense and goaltending here

This final segment will examine the prospects and rookies of
the 2014-2015 Calgary Flames.

This season is shaping up to be something a little different
for the Flames. They are almost universally pegged to be one of the worst teams
in the league this season and are clearly rebuilding. At the same time they
have some very nice players at key positions in Backlund, Brodie, Giordano,
Hudler and Hiller.  

Burke and Treliving will also have to take some time to
evaluate some prospects at the end of their ELCs before deciding who gets
re-signed. This means that there could be a lot of NHL debuts and proverbial
cups of coffee in Flames silks this year which could affect roster strength at
times.

Jooris, Van Brabant, Knight, Baertschi, Arnold, Wolf,
Hanowski, Agostino, Acolatse, Ramage, Cundari, Reinhart, Ferland, and Elson are
all entering the final year of their ELCs and the Flames will need to decide
whether to retain their rights. With a number of draft picks likely to turn pro
at the end of the season, there will be a number of names here who will be left
by the roadside.

At the same time the recent addition of Devin Setoguchi puts
a clear roadblock in front of a lot of their prospects, so those that get the
call up will have either earned it or have a particular ability *coughknuckledraggersscough*
that is considered desirable.

As it stands at the end of August, the Flames reserve list
has 47 contracts with four, Kanzig, Klimchuk, Poirier and Bennett likely to
slide as they return to junior, giving the team a little bit of room to pursue
free agents, be they junior, AHL, NCAA or NHL. Billins makes it 48, but I’m not
sure he would count in this situation.

So, here are my projections for the prospects that may make
their way to the Flames’ roster this coming season.

 

You’ll notice I’ve listed Baertschi here as well in my
previous RE article on forwards. I think he is betwixt and between on the NHL roster
right now, and I’ve already said there seems a decent chance that he gets dealt this
coming season for a young defender.

Gaudreau gets a real shot in this scenario, and his NHLE
translates somewhat in his rookie season. We’ll see what happens during the season, but I think he gives us the occasional glimpse of what he can do when a defender gets caught napping. 

The rest of the group are basically call-up options that get their
fair shake by season’ end. I’m working off my predictions on games played for
the established forwards to provide the opportunity, so those games aren’t
likely to be consecutive, and that may impact the numbers in the end.

Taking the entire roster’s points projections together the
Flames would be likely to score somewhere in the vicinity of 206 goals this year,
or about 2.5 goals per game. This would have put them 22nd overall in the league last season and would represent an
increase of four goals over last year.

Coupling this with the improved goaltending expected of
Hiller and Ramo, an estimated 2.6 goals against per game, a number that would
have put them 13th in the league last season. This would translate to the Flames essentially treading water offensively, while making significant strides in goal-prevention.

That would seem to match what our eyes tell us about the team over the course of the summer.

The Flames are supposed to be a dumpster fire this coming
season, challenging for the bottom of the league and in the McDavid/Eichel
lottery drive.

I’m not convinced of this.

For interests’ sake I decided to take the average shooting
percentages I had for every forward and defenseman and add that to the
estimated save percentage, based on an historical average for Hiller and a
carryover of Ramo’s previous seasons’ number, to provide a PDO number.

PDO is typically used to determine a team’s performance
level. Over time it trends strongly towards an even 100%, or 1000. Teams that
have a high shooting percentage or are getting extraordinary goaltending will
show up in this category and a reversion to the mean can be anticipated at some
point.

The SH% of all forwards and defense, with the exception of
the Rookies/Prospects mentioned above where information is unavailable or
sparse, was 9.63. The estimated SV% of both Hiller and Ramo was 90.85. The
PDO is therefore 100.48.

This implies that the estimates I’ve done so far are as even
as can be expected with perhaps a slightly optimistic bias.

There are some arguments that the reliance of the Flames on
players like Engelland and Smid, whose possession numbers are the numerical
equivalent of a smoking crater, will result in a reduced save rate while they are
on the ice. I’m not a big believer that defenders directly impact save%, and
that possession numbers are a better indication of their defensive abilities –
their job is to take the puck away from the player and save% shoots up during
the time when your team has the puck.

So, the PDO would suggest that the numbers we’ve arrived at
are within reason and that the Flames could perform individually somewhere within
the range we’ve marked. As a team, that remains to be seen. NHL history is
filled with good individual efforts wasted on poor teams.

My reasoning behind believing that the Flames will not be
one of the worst teams in the league this coming season though, is far less
quantifiable and leans more towards the “seen-him-good”. I believe that in team
sports the whole can often be greater than the sum of its parts. Hartley
managed something akin to this last season, and I think he has an improved,
albeit marginally, roster this season.

So, in review, here are the final estimations for games,
ppg, and points for the Flames this 2014-2015 season, as well as the estimated
points, goals, goals per game.

Thanks to LastBigBear for pointing out an error I had made
in Monahan’s points projections. They were meant to read .45, rather than .33.
The corrections have been made and new totals are provided here.

The Flames are estimated to score somewhere in the range of 206 to 210 goals this season, depending on how you want to break down the goals/assist ratio on the total points. Phoenix scored that last season and finished 20th overall in that category (and in the overall standings). If we took that as a best-case scenario for the Flames, I think we could find the range south of that pretty easily. If you trace back three seasons (excluding the 2013 lockout year) the lowest 210 goals placed a team was 25th back 2009-2010.  Buffalo scored a full 60 fewer goals last year and even though they may have improved, I’m not convinced they “found” fifty or sixty goals during the off-season.

My guess is that the Flames finish no lower than 27th overall again this season, barring catastrophic injury to a core player.

The following is the table from the article discussing goaltending. Hiller in row one, Ramo in row two, averages between the two in the third row, with goals against per game in the final column.

On a clear day you can see the Flames’ goaltending improvement from the Red Deer city limits. Picking up almost half a goal against per game is no small thing for a team that danced on the razor’s edge as often as the Flames did last season.

It is one of the big factors playing into my estimation of the Flames’ potential improvement this year. Brodie, Backlund, Giordano are part of the equation, but adding a solid goaltender helps to actualize their defensive strengths.

This was one of George Harrison’s few singles with the
Beatles. Perhaps less known than While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Something,
Here Comes the Sun is Harrison writing about coming through a long, cold
English winter. The months were changing and you could feel the warmth on its
way.

Harrison:

“Here Comes the Sun” was written at the time when
Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: ‘Sign
this’ and ‘sign that.’ Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on
forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I
was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief
of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked
around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote “Here
Comes the Sun.”

I Me Mine (1980) p. 144

The Flames took their shot at the chalice a decade ago and
ever since the sun has been getting further and further away, the frost
creeping onto the lawn and the cold seeping into the bones.

Winter may not be over, and there is definitely a chill in
the air still, but the first light of the expected spring is just beginning to
creep over the horizon. Fans in Calgary are braced for another long season, but
the good things coming make it all bearable.

Harrison was always my favourite Beatle. Paul always seemed
to want to be in charge, John was John, and I can’t remember that other guy’s
name right now. But George seemed like he was a quiet pillar of the group. He
didn’t have the songwriting chops that Paul and John had. That’s no crime, they
were beyond generational and we aren’t likely to see a duo like that again.

But Harrison often led the Beatles into new territory,
including introducing them to Ravi Shankar and Hindu mythology and musical
inspiration. He was a harbinger for them, although a subtle one.

Like his bandmate and friend, he died too young, but he left
us some damned-good music, and even when he was reflecting on his mortality, he
saw the glint of sunlight in the gloaming.