[Calgary4LIfe]

Burke and Treliving are not stupid either. They see a guy who is hard to play against - that is black and blue hockey.

Did Paul Byron fit into 'Black and Blue Hockey'? I bet if you were to ask Burke, he probably would have been ok with a Byron on the bottom 6 - he was difficult to play against, and surprisingly physical.

I still think that people are reading too much into the 'wanting to get bigger' and 'black and blue'. They are definitely going to favor big skilled guys over small skilled guys, but Burke and Treliving have both said that this team needs to get more skilled and faster in addition to getting bigger and more physical. Mangiapane fits.

Nylander and Keller fits as well - but you can bet that if the Flames view Brown or even Jost as fairly equally talented/upside/translatable/whatever - they pick the bigger guys. Flames will not pass on skill for the sake of size - they will just keep trying to continually find guys who have size, skill and speed.

I do think that part of the perceived issues with Burke talking about 'Black and Blue" or 'Truculence' is that people will automatically think "He drafted Tyler Biggs so early". Yep, huge mistake there - but loads of teams ended up reaching for other big AND small players. Burke preached black and blue, but he then spent a lot of assets in acquiring Kessel - hardly a guy that fits.

I also think that people think that "Black and Blue" means the Flames will be less talented and a lower scoring team. I don't think so.

St. Louis was a fairly high scoring team a few seasons ago - led the league in +/- for sure that season (or perhaps even a couple of seasons). People will point at the Kings and argue that they are a low scoring team because they are a big black and blue team. Same fingers pointing at Anaheim.

Lots of these teams were pretty high-scoring. They just decided to play a more structure defensive game. It isn't anything to do with black and blue hockey.

Look at the bottom of the list for teams' GF. Most of those teams are rebuilding teams, and that isn't exactly fair, but none are 'black and blue' teams. Keep crawling up - first real black and blue team is Winnipeg - they had a disappointing season, but fair enough. They were 21st in scoring.

Next is Anaheim at 18th - however, they had that atrocious start to the season where they couldn't buy a goal. Amazing that they finished at 18th... but excuses are excuses - they finished at 'average' territory.

St. Louis and LA are next at 15th and 14th respectfully. However, the highly skilled, fast and high output offensive juggernaut Tampa Bay Lightning only put up 2 more goals than LA, and 3 more goals than St. Louis.

Dallas is ranked first, Washington second. Who are their best offensive players? Benn and Ovechkin.

Calgary is simply going to place a higher value on obtaining larger players with the capability of playing a more physical game, but it won't be at the cost of becoming worse on the ice. That would be dumb. Burke and Treliving are not dumb.