Nope....they are officially done in my books. NOw I am hoping the boys get stay red hot and possibly move into 7th or even 6th place in the West.
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"Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than to find, as quickly as possible, someone to worship."
No. You have to get extremely pessimistic about Calgary's play and give the Avs points in every game to come up with a scenario where the last game of the year even matters.
That said, I've seen too many movies where the hunted star lets down his or her guard only to have the seemingly dead villan jump up for one last stab to go poking the Avs corpse. The Flames need to take a shovel to the Avs with two more good games to finish this roadtrip.
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I cautiously have the Flames going 2-3-1 in the next 6. I have Colorado going 2-4-0. But all that aside. I think the Flames are pretty save if they continue to play like they did last night.
As long as they can clinch prior to the final game against the Avs and they can give some players some rest. Kipper especially. Basically the way they have had to play last couple of weeks (playoff Hockey) they will burn out sooner. So a couple of resting games will help some players. Can not lose intensity though. Things are looking up....
I cautiously have the Flames going 2-3-1 in the next 6. I have Colorado going 2-4-0. But all that aside. I think the Flames are pretty save if they continue to play like they did last night.
If the Flames go 2-3-1, then that's 97 points. To beat that, the Avs would have to go 6-0-0.
That will be difficult given that the Canucks, Wild and Predators aren't likely to simply lay down and die. Neither are the Flames in two of those games for that matter.
Don't count the Avs out altogether though. It seems we did that a couple of weeks ago and then suddenly they were within 4.
One of many who is too boring; thinks that there should be rules regarding grammar in custom user titles, and also makes moderators wonder if there is a charachter limit here. I mean come on- you would think that would be a limitation in the software
Join Date: Jan 2003
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Story is the same today as it was three weeks ago: The Avs are just too far back.
When they started their 10-0-2 run, they were 12 back of us. Three weeks of nearly perfect hockey saw them make up only 5 points.
They need to play even better than they did during that run, and have us play far worse than we did. It just isnt happening.
Maybe the lesson here is not to focus on the Avs, but for the Flames to focus on improving the road record.
The Flames have two season series ending games coming up on Thursday and Sat. and must win both to win those season series. (The Canucks one must be won in regulation in order to avoid a tie in the season series points-wise).
Seems to me that if they go 4-0 on this last road trip it will be a huge confidence boost and Colorado will be even further back in the mirror.
And I don't know about the rest of you guys, but winning the season series against the Canucks and Wild for a second year in a row would be worthy of major bragging rights!
But . . . But I thought the Canucks were totally dominating Calgary this year, you know kicking thier a$$, treating them like a retarded younger brother, running roughshod over the boys in Calgary.
All of my Vancouver friends have told me that Calgary is nowhere near the team Vancouver is, and that they're completely fed us thier lunch in the head to head games.
Just took a Look at the records for the Wild, Flames and Canucks over the last 41 games.
Flames : 24-11-6 (54pts) (3 SOW and 2 OTW)
Nucks: 29-6-6 (64pts) (4 SOW and 6 OTW)
Wild: 27-8-6 (60ts) (3 SOW and 3 OTW)
The Canucks record over this time is really inflated (a ton of wins in the extra session and SO). The Flames and Nucks have the same amount of Regulation wins in the last 41, the Nanucks have just benifited from going to overtime 5 more times then the Flames.
The Wild even though they had a ton of overtime games early in the season have been a much better team then the Canucks and Flames.
Don't see the Canucks really going anywhere this year in the playoffs as they have been lucky to win a lot of close games (see GF vs GA net is the lowest out of any playoff team in the west) and going to OT a lot.
While I have the Flames making the playoffs, I don't think that they will be content with placing 8th. (as fans, we will be) So, I personally, don't think that they will rest Kipper unless placing 8th is the only outcome they will achieve(as in; 7th or 6th is out of the question)
Updated Race Spreadsheet - 3/28
