[sureLoss]

http://calgaryherald.com/sports/hock...nce-in-calgary

It wasn’t just the offensive oomph that suddenly seemed to be missing for Alex Chiasson during his two-season stint in Canada’s capital city.

“I’ve talked to Alex each of the years I’ve seen him in Ottawa, and he just didn’t seem as excited,” said Calgary Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan, Chiasson’s boss for a short (seven games) but successful (six goals!) stint with the Dallas Stars in April of 2013.

“Remember, I had a little history with the player and I could just see it in him right from the first time that I saw him there, probably a month or two months into his career in Ottawa … I could just see it in him that it wasn’t the same look in the guy that I had.”

And what about on Monday, when Gulutzan — the new skipper at the Saddledome — called to welcome Chiasson to the Flames organization?

“I can tell you, for sure, I sensed the excitement. 100 per cent,” Gulutzan said Tuesday. “I know he was tremendously excited for the opportunity.”

“You see the snapshot I had of Alex in Dallas and you’d think ‘Oh boy, Gully is biased,’ ” Gulutzan said, referring to Chiasson’s six-goal splurge during a late-season eye-opener at American Airlines Center in 2013. “He came up and he played real well for us. What he does is he’s got a skill-set as a big body to get to the net, and he’s really good around the net, as a net-front presence. He still has that quality.

“He was really highly rated coming out of Dallas and it hasn’t gone well for him in Ottawa, but this is a good young player with good size, good reach, good hockey sense. It’s a chance for him to come in here and prove to himself and to us that he can get things cracking like he started off in Dallas.

“It’s a fresh start for Alex, and we’re happy to have him. He’s a young player that could have some real upside for us.”