[SuperMatt18]

It's really ridiculous that people are ready to give up on GG so quickly, the team has actually made a lot of strides over last season - they just haven't necessarily shown up on the scoreboard for a couple of reasons.

When you look at where we ranked in the league in some stats this year vs last year it starts to tell a bit of a story.

Looking at the team stats 5v5:

Shots For:
2015 - 20th
2016 - 11th

Shots Against:
2015 - 17th
2016 - 6th

Corsi %:
2015 - 21st
2016 - 7th

SH%:
2015 - 4th (8.15%)
2016 - 24th (6.84%)

SV%:
2015 - 30th (.910)
2016 - 24th (.916)

Plus we have seen improvement in our special teams as well, especially after a really horrific start.

PP:
2015:22nd (17.0%)
2016: 9th (21.2%)

PK:
2015: 30th (75.5%)
2016: 20th (80.3%)

PIM/GP
2015: 19th (9:11/GP)
2016: 1st (11:42/GP)

So across the board the Flames have been a much better team this year but the sudden increase of penalties called against us (which started immediately after the Wideman incident last year), and our team shooting percentage really falling off a cliff at 5v5 has hurt the team performance overall.

The start of the season, and that 4 game stretch a week ago, were pretty horrible but overall this team has improved a lot with GG. It's not just a stats thing either, the structure and team play improvements are very clear from watching the game - just need some of the individuals to find their comfort zones and get going now.

Might be even more remarkable considering our goaltending has not improved as much as we would have hoped YoY, and that we are rolling out a bottom 3 on defense that is pretty bad. Changing coaches again now and the team needing to re-adjust all over again would be a step back IMO.