What’s the old saying about fooling people? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me? Didn’t the Calgary Flames get fooled by believing that Alex Tanguay and Olli Jokinen could be the answers to their offensive woes a couple of years ago. After jettisoning them, at least people could feel a little bad for the Sutters since they made the wrong choice.
But there will be no sympathy for the Sutters this time around if Tanguay and Jokinen fail as members of the Flames one more time. It’s really been an odd calendar year for Calgary fans with the signing of underachieving defenceman Jay Bouwmeeseter and the surprising multi-player trade with the Leafs at the trade deadline that gave Dion Phaneuf his walking papers and handed a jersey to several underachieving Maple Leafs forwards.
With so much negativity surrounding the Flames, it will be a very pleasant surprise for the people of Calgary if they can get back to the top of the Western Conference standings, but they will need a lot of things to change in order for that to go from being a pipe dream to being a reality.
First of all, they need to find a way to get consistent production out of their 12 forwards. Jarome Iginla led the team in points with 69 in a full campaign, but with 98 points and 89 points the two years previous, does this mean we’re in the middle of a decline for the one guy that could always be counted on by the Flames?
But after Iginla, Tanguay and Jokinen, they really don’t have a lot of depth at the forward position and they will have to rely on guys to play above their capabilities and expectations. Rene Bourque had 58 points in 73 games, but the next closest scorer for the Flames last season was Daymond Langkow with 37 points in 72 games. There’s a serious lack of talent with the forwards on this team.
Defensively, they should have a great first pairing with Bouwmeester and Robyn Regehr, but both of them battled through some inconsistency last season. After the top pairing, there are serious questions about the other two pairings. Would you have full confidence in Ian White, Corey Sarich, Mark Giordano and Steve Staios as your bottom two pairings?
The one player and aspect of the team that they count on is the goaltending of Miikka Kiprusoff. Having played 72 games last season, he managed to win 35 games, have a 2.31 GAA and a save percentage of 920.
Two players to watch out for in camp are Matt Stajan and Ian White. The former Maple Leafs were pretty impressive for the Flames in the short time they were with Calgary last season. If it wasn’t for their production, that trade would have looked even worse than it already did for the Flames. Stajan scored 16 points in 27 games and White had 12 points in 27 games from the back-end. Will they duplicate their production?