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Originally Posted by stemit14

There have been big "what ifs" in so many seasons for the flames... This one seems pretty small compared to other years. What if the refs and league spent the time to view every angle of the '04 goal in overtime?

I'll even go to a more debatable and interesting what if in another season if we want to talk about injuries...

For the first half of the 2008-2009 season, the flames were one of the best teams in the league... It had more depth than any of the recent years before or since. It was full of guys having career years or at least bounce back seasons... Bourque, cammalleri, glencross, bertuzzi, langkow, Lombardi, iginla, giordano, phaneuf. All these guys were having a great year. I remember the flames being only 3 points back of detroit for first overall in the entire league in January. They were top five in goals for and fewest goals against. They were being called a dark horse cup contender.

Then, in the span of 2 weeks in February I think, the flames lost Bourque, glencross, langkow, giordano, bertuzzi, moss, and regehr to long term injury. The flames sputtered over the last half of the season as they lost their scoring depth and best shut down defencemen for long periods of time. None of those guys got their games back to top shape in time for the playoffs. The goals against average plummeted. They dropped out of home ice advantage and lost to Chicago in the first round.

Sutter, furious about being a high scoring team that didn't score a lot of goals... fired Keenan as coach and replaced him with Brent sutter. And replaced cammalleri, bertuzzi, and Lombardi with jokinen and bouwmeaster.

My "what if" is this:

What if the flames didn't have that huge, sudden hit of long term injuries that sabotaged that season? I think it would have drastically changed the direction of the franchise for years to come. I'm not saying I disapprove of everything sutter did to change the team after that season... But it's an interesting what if.

To me, that was the best Flames team of the last 15+ years. Obviously the 2004 squad went further, but was definitely less talented. I specifically remember Kerr talking on Overtime on the Fan about how the Flames had stopped looking down to Vancouver (2nd in the division) and were now looking up towards Detroit. There was a discussion about if the Flames had earned the status of an 'elite' team. Something like 13 points was the cushion on Vancouver before absolutely falling off a cliff to finish 5th in the West. If memory serves, they had the lead on Chicago in games 1 and 2 before losing. That, to me, was the most painful of the first-round exit string.