Quote:
Originally Posted by Cali Flames Fan
Every team has rough stretches. Ours just happened to occur when the goaltending went sour. It affected literally everything else as the Flames tried to scramble even more in their own end to cover up more for the goalie, never sure of when a weak one was going in, destroying team confidence. When they had to collapse nearly constantly to help the goalie, they lost the ability to get out of their zone and spring a couple forwards in a transition attack, which has led to most of their offense this year. This isn't a team that can consistently grind out a cycle game and create consistent offensive pressure, just not enough size. So they rely on speed and defensemen joining the rush to create great opportunities. Without the ability to create speed in transition and have defensemen join the rush, they lost most of their offense. The defense wasn't terrible in that stretch (looking at shots against), just had to play from behind way too often, which forces them to become overly aggressive, leading to more odd man rushes the other way.
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That is super interesting for me, thanks.
You never know what to assign the role of chicken and what to assign the role of egg.
The transition was dead, I thought it was a confidence issue, but you're right if you no longer trust your goaltender you can't streak your forwards so the outlet is gone.
Ortio is like the guy in the Dos Equis commercials so the team feeds off the swagger and now they're a counter team again.
Still don't see the Flames outplaying anyone, and that has to to stop, but they're doing more right now than they have in a while.