The Two-Line Pass

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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Hoo boy did Eric Duhatshek go a little overboard this morning in the Globe and Mail.

Separated at birth?: IGINLA: HOCKEY PLAYER, OBAMA: PRESIDENT

The Calgary Flames captain has a lot in common with the new U.S. commander-in-chief, including leadership abilities, respect and never backing away from a fight

Uhhhhh.. okay? One plays hockey (and hasn’t scored in seven games god dammit), one could blow up the entire world with the push of a button. Makes perfect, borderline-racist sense. You see, both Jarome Iginla and Barack Obama are half-black(!).

The parallels in their personal histories are startling, remarkable even.

They are both products of an interracial marriage. Their fathers, black, hailed from Africa, one from Kenya, the other from Nigeria. Their mothers, white, hailed from the hinterland, one from Kansas in the American Midwest, the other from Edmonton in Canada’s frozen north.

STARTLING! But there a number of other hockey players that remind Duhatshek of Barack Obama, including but not limited to: Dustin Byfuglien, Kevin Weekes, Kyle Okposo, Grant Fuhr, Mike Grier, Manny Malhotra, Anson Carter and, of course, Manute Bol.

If there wasn’t a 16-year gap in their respective ages - Obama is 47, Iginla 31 - you could almost argue they were separated at birth.

No, you really, really couldn’t.

I just imagine Duhatshek meandering around the dressing room at the Flames’ practice rink yesterday going, “So that Barack Obama, huh?” until finally Craig Conroy, who will talk to anyone about anything for any length of time they like, said, “YEAH! I’M FROM AMERICA!” and talked at a rapid pace for 45 minutes straight. Kudos to Duhatshek for pulling any type of story out of this, I guess, but it has to be the most asinine piece of front-page news ever.

The Lead

(Please note before I begin this post that I had no intention whatever of writing about the Flames again tonight, but their performance against Nashville dictated it. If you were looking for me to talk about Buffalo, I apologize thoroughly. Onward then…)

If Mike Keenan still has a job tomorrow morning, it won’t be because he deserves it.

The Flames have played seven games now, I don’t think there’s been one yet where they looked like anything you could call a contender for the Northwest division crown. That’s all on Keenan.

The Flames may have gotten four third-period goals, including two from Jarome Iginla to complete a hat trick he started in the second period, but it’s important to differentiate Keenan’s lack of coaching from Iginla’s team leadership and ability to take over a game. You or I could have looked like a genius for that just by standing around behind the bench and enjoying a nice piece of Dubble Bubble.

But through seven games, the Flames have continually played undisciplined, largely ineffective, defensively irresponsible hockey. Two straight wins is great to look at, but those games have been impossibly hard to watch. I sat through the entirety of both of them despite strongly considering flipping to another game (I’m a masochist, I guess). I was eventually rewarded for my efforts, such as they are, but these games have been just brutal. The Flames picked up another 23 more minutes in penalties tonight, including giving the Preds a pair of 5-on-3 opportunities, one of which was a full two minutes because Jim Vandermeer decided to high-stick the nearest opponent after Rene Bourque had already been whistled for slashing. This while the team trailed 3-1. It was unbelievable.

The problem is there’s no accountability on this team from the coaching staff. Stupid play isn’t punished with a benching, and any line shuffling has just been abysmal. At one point tonight, Iginla was on a line with Vandermeer and Wayne Primeau with Cory Sarich and Dion Phaneuf at the points. This was actually a strategy that an NHL coach employed in a two-goal game.

The Flames were also hopelessly outplayed in the early going, getting outshot 14-4 in the first period and 24-15 through two. If not for a hilarious Nashville meltdown sparked by Iginla’s goal late in the second period and the Preds’ trying to sit on the lead, this would have been an utter embarrassment for Calgary on the first game of its brief road trip during which they fly from Calgary to Nashville to Phoenix back to Calgary in three and a half days.

Miikka Kiprusoff continued to play pretty well (two starts in a row! what a streak!) in making 35 saves on 38 shots, but he shouldn’t have been that busy. Nashville’s shots per game is 28.3, and that’s 20th in the league. Spot a better team 10 shots above their season average every night and see how many goals you give up. A hint: more than three. None of the goals were really Kipper’s fault. That, obviously, is on the defense, which ultimately is on Keenan.

The Flames will talk about how important the comeback was and how big it is to get two points on the road after trailing 3-0 for more than half the game, but it never should have gotten there. Keenan has coached a perfectly good team into Turdsville, Alberta (no, not Edmonton) and something needs to get squared away coaching-wise soon, because wins like this won’t keep happening.

By the way, the Flames are now 3-0 when Jarome Iginla scores. When he doesn’t, they’re winless. Think about that.

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The Lead

Lots of firsts for the Calgary Flames tonight.

After two games, they had yet to score a power play goal in 13 opportunities, had yet to win, and had yet to get a single point — or even an average performance — from arguably the best all-around player alive, captain Jarome Iginla.

Calgary took care of all three tonight. Dustin Boyd struck a man up just 3:41 into the game, it beat the Avalanche 5-4 (more on that in a second here), and saw Iginla spark said win with an inspired one-goal, one-assist third period.

After the Flames blew a 3-1 lead for the second game in a row, Iginla finally broke his personal slump by scoring a patented Jarome Iginla goal, nicely picking out a corner on Petr Budaj with a wrister from the circle.  He also set up Bertuzzi’s game-winner, a diving attempt at one of the biggest rebounds you’ll ever see in your life. That was Big Bert’s second of the night and third of the season.

But some problems persisted for the Flames. Inability to hold a lead, for example. After going up 3-1 in the first, the Flame eventually entered the third tied 3-3 and were being terribly outplayed, taking bad penalty after bad penalty. The stupidest, though, was on Iginla.

Having given up a goal with 30 seconds to go in the period that saw the Avs pull within one, Iginla opted to fight. Not the worst idea, one supposes, but it wasn’t exactly a fair trade-off. Instead of picking someone that could hurt the Flames on the scoresheet as badly as he can hurt the Avs, Iginla chose to scrap with… Cody McCormick? He was rightly ripped by the TSN announcers for it AND he fought with his visor on. That was a pretty awful decision all around.

The above incident was sparked by Colorado’s other Cody Mack, Cody McLeod, taking a swing at Dion Phaneuf after the whistle, which is fine. But interviewed between periods, McLeod noted that he would make Phaneuf “know 55 (McLeod’s number) by the end of the night.” Good attitude for an agitator to have. But then the studio host on Altitude, the Avs’ network, said (and this is a direct quote that I am in no way concocting because it’s just too ridiculous to be fabricated), “The Codys give defensemen nightmares.”

Uhh, which Codys? McCormick who has 19 career points in bits and pieces of five NHL seasons including this one, or McLeod, who has 11 career points in 52 games?

Another problem was that Miikka Kiprusoff was STILL awful. Another four goals tonight (making a robust total 15 in three games) on 29 shots. Something has to be done about this and quick. He’s looked simply awful. Not that Budaj was better at the other end, surrendering five on 35 and a good majority of them softer than Kristian Huselius.

Budaj, by the way, is 0-3 with a 4.38 GAA and .824 sv%. While Kiprusoff has similar numbers, he at least has no one behind him ready to usurp the No. 1 job (although a few more performances like the ones so far this season and he will). Budaj is doing this despite knowing that Andrew Raycroft is just as good a goaltender and clearly deserves a try between the pipes if for no other reason than Budaj has been drizzling dog crap in three straight starts.

The Flames will certainly take it, but it was ugly by any stretch of the imagination.

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A little lost amidst the hoopla of Calgary signing universally hated right wing Todd Bertuzzi to a one-year, $1.95 million contract, was the fact that the Flames were on the fence with the signing until Jarome Iginla approved of the deal.

The Calgary Flames would really really really really really like their fans to keep that in mind. From the Flames’ press release:

“Todd is a proven scorer with the ability to play both wings,” said (GM Darryl) Sutter. “He expressed to us that he wanted to play in Canada and that
desire along with signing him to a one year deal was important to our
philosophy. He wanted to play on a good team and it fit our money.

“Additionally, our captain, Jarome Iginla, was a strong supporter of Todd and wanted him on our team.”

No seriously, Iginla wanted him on the team. Listen:

“He is a character guy,” Iginla insisted. “I’ve known him over the years, and he made a very bad decision. I assure you if he could take that back, he would. I do believe in second chances.”

What you still might not understand is that Iginla was the one that wanted Bertuzzi in Calgary. Here are interviews with Calgary’s local sports talk station from Iginla himself, Bertuzzi, and Sutter to reinforce that fact.

Even with their beloved captain and general manager advocating tolerance and forgiveness (Sutter went so far as to laughably compare Bertuzzi paralyzing Steve Moore to running a red light), Flames diehards are still pissed. On the most popular Flames message board, calgarypuck.com, more than seven percent of fans say they will boycott the team until Bertuzzi’s outta Calgary. Almost 57 percent say they aren’t in favor of the move, but will tolerate it.

They throw around words like “bad person” and “locker-room cancer,” as though Sutter hadn’t thought of that. Good for him for not caring whether or not Todd Bertuzzi punches kittens and litters.

If Bertuzzi can produce 40 points in 68 games like he did last year in Anaheim for less than half the cost, the Flames front office will be doing cartwheels.