We have a FN roundtable coming up in the next few days on the Flames so I’ll limit the discussion to the Blues.

St. Louis has gone on a run since Hitchcock replaced Payen and  although Ken is usually a guy who can coax better than average results from his clubs, the truth is the Blues were bound to rebound with or without the coaching change. I covered their early season results at HP here. Short version? The Blues had better than average underlying numbers at ES and their record through 13 games this season was almost entirely bad luck.

Hitchcock may be a good move anyways (although Payne was pretty capable work himself), but we should resist assuming a coaching change would suddenly right the ship here in Calgary – the fundamentals were there for the Blues prior to the change and their rebound was inevitable. So while I think the Flames will eventually go on a run at some point as a matter of chance, the local team’s issues are a lot deeper.