Quote:
Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan
18 straight games allowing 3 goals or less.
That's fantastic.
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I've been following this streak of solid defensive efforts pretty closely - excited as I am that our "on paper" great D is really starting to look like "on ice" great defense.
So, 18 consecutive games allowing 3 or fewer goals, our record over that span is 11-4-3. 25 of a possible 36 points for a points percentage of .694.
I got to thinking today, is 18 games a lot to hold opponents under 3 goals? The New Jersey Devils have the 20th ranked defnse in the league at exactly 3.00 GA/GP, the Kings have the best defense with 2.40 GA/GP. Also, the 12th best offense in the league is the Flyers with 2.98 GF/GP so holding opponents under 4 goals is nowhere near
rare.
With the help of this great run of games, the Flames have moved into 8th place in the league with 2.69 GA/GP, just ahead of Vegas (2.71) and just behind San Jose (2.66).
I went and looked through the schedules for the 7 teams with better overall GA/GP than us to see what kind of streaks they'd put together.
LAK - 6 games
TBL - 8 games
BOS - 6 games
NAS - 5 games
STL - 9 games
ANA - 7 games
SJS - 6 games
One thing that jumps out to me is that list of teams is almost a complete list of the teams considered to be real 'contenders.' The second thing that jumps out is just how much better 18 games is than anything these teams have put together. St. Louis had a run of 9 games in the early part of the season which jumped them out on top of the league and had them looking like they might be world-beaters.
The Flames have
doubled that streak. I think this run is truly something impressive, I know that Tyler Dellow in a recent Athletic article referred to the Flames as a 'smart money dark-horse Stanley Cup pick' and I think he's right.
I think it would be hubris for us to put ourselves in the ranks of real strong contenders for the Cup: special teams issues and reliance on a few top scorers keep us out of that conversation.
But we fo' real.