The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

A couple years ago I apparently signed up for something through the Calgary Flames’ official website because they clearly have my email address on file. Occasionally I’ll get emails about special tickets being put on sale just for people like me a few hours before game day.

I don’t mark them as spam, I don’t look for a link to unsubscribe myself from this list. I sit there and I say, “Oh look another email from the Flames about tickets what a nice organization they sure do care about me even if I’m probably their only sworn American fan within 1,500 miles of the Atlantic Ocean. ” Not that I read these emails beyond the subject line. Again, I’m about 2,200 miles from the Saddledome. These on-sales literally couldn’t matter less to me.

But I guess my point is that I’m a hell of a goddamn Flames fan. I’m such a good fan that I will let them try to sell me crap I don’t want just out of my desire to support them in any way possible.

So fanatical for this team am I that I have, in the past three weeks, watched every single one of their uniformly hideous games.

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The Lead

Preemptive warning: For some reason people get vaguely upset when I write about the Flames (because, presumably, there are my favorite team and this is somehow offensive?). This is going to be one of those times. Also, if you have an ultra high-res copy of the above picture I want to see Olli Jokinen’s excited face as large as humanly possible for some reason.

It’s pretty impressive, what’s happening here. Jarome Iginla is hefting the Flames on his back for what has to be like the 300th time and making them, kicking and screaming, not-terrible despite their best efforts.

By anyone’s definition, he had a slow start, scoring just two goals and two assists in eight games and everyone was like “Old man Iginla’s finally lost it.” Peep these stats though: 14 goals in his last 14 games, 11 in his last 10, seven in his last five. Handful of assists thrown in there as well. I guess ya take that if you’re Calgary.

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The Lead

Well, the Avs did it again tonight and all you doubters can just go ahead and groove on that.

We all heard the talk at the beginning of the year; about how they’d finish dead last in the West, how there wasn’t anyone on the team that was any good and how you couldn’t enter a season with a goaltending tandem of Craig Anderson and Petr Budaj and still expect to win any significant number of games.

And with tonight’s 3-2 win over Calgary on the second night of a road back-to-back, those doubters were once again proven to be 100 percent WRONG.

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The Lead

Okay, seriously, I watched the third period of the Flames game and that was it. And while I did see Jarome Iginla wrist the absolute hell of a shot (one of my favorite things in the world, by the way), and also some crazy Freddy Sjostrom goal, then Mark Giordano fighting someone and finally the Flames winning a game and not looking like garbage doing it.

I think I’ve been dosed with hallucinogens or something and I need to go lie down.

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The Lead

Calgary lost 6-5 in overtime. They led 5-0 nine minutes into the game.

There are no words to adequately express my rage.

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The Lead

Last Friday, the Flames and Oilers played at Rexall Place and the hosts, though they’d spotted the Flames a few leads, fought back every time, including a determined third-period effort that saw them pull level with their hated rivals inside of six minutes to go. But then Nikolai Khabibulin dashed his own team’s hopes of heading to overtime by mishandling a soft dump and allowing a Flames forward to poke the puck into the net inside of a minute to go.

A devastating loss? Maybe. But what the hell, right? It’s early yet and the Flames are a very good team.

So then what are we to make of tonight’s 4-3 shootout loss to those same rivals in the same building, especially since it came about in a very similar way. Tonight, it was the Oil that found themselves up 2-0 and dominant through the first period, and the Flames that scrapped and gritted their way, partly through the energy gained from an inspirational donnybrook between Jarome Iginla and Ethan Moreau, back even. And this time, it was the Oilers that got the late lead off a fortuitous bounce and fancy move from Ales Hemsky.

But once again, the Oilers proved why they’re going absolutely nowhere this season. The Flames pulled the goalie and used their time out with less than a minute to go, and the game looked all but lost with three ticks on the clock. That’s when Dion Phaneuf slid a puck across the blue line to Jay Bouwmeester, who fired out of desperation, and saw his shot get tipped (just under the crossbar, as a review showed) past Khabibulin by Rene Bourque. With 1.6 seconds to go.

In overtime the Flames took an early penalty and tried to give the game to the Oil, but even that wasn’t enough. They went on to lose in the shootout, 2-1, which seemed appropriate enough given the way they frittered away their opportunities in the dying minutes. They simply didn’t deserve the win.

Didn’t the Oilers say something about needing to win more at home? Was that just me that heard that?

Oh well, there’s always next year.

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The Lead

And there it was, the first gigantic hit of the hockey season. Dion Phaneuf on Kyle Okposo.

But given the time of year, this hit has already sparked a good amount of debate (covering several topics) among the Twittering and Facebooking and Messageboarding folks that care far too much about this stuff.

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The Lead

(I know, I know. You guys don’t like it when I talk about the Flames (or Bruins, for that matter). I did it too often at the beginning of the season and got enough e-mail about it that I pretty much stopped doing it entirely. But tonight, my boys kinda forced my hand. I hope you’ll appreciate my lack of choice in this matter.)

Imagine the perfect postseason game, if you will. Lots of physicality? Nice, close, exciting game? A bit of nastiness? Yeah, that sounds about right.

And that was exactly what everyone who watched Game 3 of the Calgary/Chicago series got, and Calgary pulled the series back within a game thanks to an impressive 4-2 victory. The game was back-and-forth, the tensions high, the boardwork consistently more like a near-brawl. Frankly, I have to admit that I gave the Flames no chance in this series coming in, and certainly not after the first two games last week, in which the Flames cranked out maybe 30 combined minutes of attentive, hardnosed hockey and suffered a pair of well-deserved losses because of it.

Not tonight. The Flames, no doubt fueled by an electrifying Saddledome crowd, played maaaybe five minutes of the type of hockey that typified the first two losses of the series, and that led directly to Chicago’s opening salvo, a Patrick Sharp goal on a power play caused by an Olli Jokinen roughing call that is actually in the dictionary next to “Rockhead penalty” (It is, I checked).

But after that, it was pretty much 55 straight minutes of Calgary doing the ony thing that was going to make it successful against a team that had so harangued it in the two showdowns in Chicago: hit everything. It was interesting to note that, in the first period on Saturday, Calgary dished out 21 hits and entered the dressing room up 2-0 as a result, but then saw the game slip away as, over the next 40 minutes, it only mustered 16 checks and pretty much let Chicago go where it pleased.

No such luck for the Blackhawks tonight. Calgary had 15 hits in the first period, 17 in the second, and 13 in the third. That’s 45 hits in 60 minutes, and the Flames were never more than plus or minus two on the overall average in any period. That indicates that the Flames, instead of playing wild, emotional hockey and having that flatline in the later stages, they kept everything at a steady level, just below the point of boiling over into something more volatile.

Things got nasty at the end, of course. No team likes getting pounded physically AND losing. And so all the childish trash talk to Jarome Iginla (which Pierre McGuire said is some of the worst he’s ever seen) and the near-fights and the crosschecks and the facewashing is understandable. And it’s going to make for some badass hockey on Wednesday.

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The Lead

In the late afternoon, someone dropped this comment on my internetting website:

Still waiting on the recap of how wonderful Jokinen’s been for the Flames. That was a good piece:

http://thetwolinepass.com/2009/03/good-night-which-scary-looking-freak-is-laughing-now/

Really enjoyed the one goal he’s scored the past three games, and the three game-losing streak. He was a BADASS deadline pickup. You’re right! YEAH!

Wellity wellity wellity. Hows about the two goals and the shootout-winning goal he scored tonight? How about it, eh? Mr. Jokinen and myself anxiously await your heartfelt apology.

Here, then, is your “recap of how wonderful Jokinen’s been for the Flames:” SUPER F’N WONDERFUL, THAT’S HOW! Three goals in four games and five in five since joining Calgary. How’s that grab ya, buddy? Plus a shootout game-winner. Is that awesome enough? Where does it rate on your scale of “BADASS”-ery?

Olli Jokinen was a third-period monster for the Flames tonight, scoring what was, at the time, the game-tying goal and helping Calgary dictate the pace and tone of the game against Detroit that his new team ended up winning 6-5 in a shootout.

If these are the side effects of dressing room cancer, please, please give me a friggin’ unhealthy crapload of it, because tonight’s game was so awesome that I can’t even stand it. Jokinen scored twice tonight in addition to the aforementioned shootout winner, keying Calgary’s comeback that many in the business would consider, umm, improbable.

For one, Calgary was outshot in the first period an incredible 28-4. For real. It also had 21 more penalty minutes than did the Red Wings, who benefited from one weaksauce call after another (one need only look at Dion Phaneuf’s 5-minute “boarding” penalty on Dan Cleary to see the ludicrosity (that MUST be a word) of the calls the Flames were catching tonight). And yet, after killing off what must have been six minutes of 5-on-3 hockey, the Flames entered the dressing room down 2-1. Then things kind of got away from the Flames, who trailed 4-2 for the majority of the second and third period.

I, admittedly, had written the game off as a lost cause, and certainly found myself shocked by Jamie Lundmark’s two-goal night that, along with Jokinen’s third-period marker, put the Flames up 5-4 (thanks to three goals in 3:12 late in the third) before Jokinen broke his stick while Detroit had the extra attacker on and scored the game-tying goal.

Mike Cammalleri and Jokinen scored very nice shootout goals to lock up the win. Miikka Kiprusoff, by the way, made 36 saves, many of which bordered on miraculous, and earned the win.

Best game I’ve watched all season, and there’s not even a close second.

And really, I still cannot believe it.

Interestingly, later in the day, the same commenter from above also posted this:

Watched him vs. Carolina … he was his normal aquarium-headed self.

Jokinen’s always been the first- or second-best player on losing teams. That’s his M.O.

Yeah, how’d that work out tonight? Ol’ Aquarmium-head SMOKED one of the two best teams in the NHL. The other player that did it was Jamie Friggin’ Lundmark.

Guess I was right once again.

“LC,” the fantabulous Mr. Jokinen and I accept your apology preemptively. Because we’re that f’n amazing.

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The Lead

Calgary is maybe the most versatile team in the NHL. I think that much is pretty clear.

And because Buffalo is a team that, as proved by their eight-goal win over the Oilers last night, can pose some problems, coach Mike Keenan had them approach the game pragmatically. The game in Edmonton had wrapped up about 9:30 p.m. local time and the first puck dropped tonight at 6 p.m. So the Flames came out and did what any smart team would do against a team playing its second game in 21 hours: worked the boards. And they did it masterfully en route to a near-effortless 5-2 win.

The confusion caused by the early cycling led directly to Calgary’s first-period goal from Mike Cammalleri, who ended the night with a hat trick. Buffalo’s defense looked so gassed by the end of the first period that Calgary saw the opportunity to use the transition as a weapon, which it did to great effect on Dion Phaneuf’s second-period goal and, after Buffalo worked it back to 2-all, Todd Bertuzzi’s shifty little backhander on a partial break that stood up as the game-winner.

After that, the Flames did what any team with a one-goal lead and a solid defense would do against a worn-down, demoralized team: go back to the boards. It was here that the Bertuzzi-Langkow-Bourqe line did the night’s most impressive work, ruling the endboards with a despotic iron fist. Such play yielded the back two goals of Cammy’s second hattie of the year.

Not that Lindy Ruff didn’t give the Flames a ton of help. for some insane, bizarre reason, Ruff pretty much began using just four defensemen after the Flames went up 3-2 and that was why Calgary dominated in the corners so convincingly.

But this game illustrated perfectly just why Calgary, when it’s playing well, is such a force against a number of different teams. You wanna play mean hockey, the Flames’ll hit you hard and repeatedly. You wanna play a speed game and they’ll blow your goddamn doors off in transition. You wanna play a skill game and they’ll even get Todd Bertuzzi to score embarrassingly picturesque goals on you. If they could play like this every night, they’d easily be mentioned in the same breath as Boston, San Jose and Detroit.

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