I personally think these are the 3 biggest issues facing this team that need to be addressed and the causes of these issues:
1. Team is emotionally fragile
A) Inconsistent/poor goaltending going back several years now. The young core of this team has been developed since the start of the rebuild playing in front of emotional goalies who give up terrible goals at terrible times. Even smith this year. He had a good start to the season but goaltending became this team’s biggest weakness for the last half of the year. The emotional fragility of this team is seen in how poorly they play with the lead. We all feel it’s inevitable that the goalie will give up a softy sooner or later so the players must feel the same way. They’re play gets scrambly trying to prevent any kind of shot getting through to their net and they stop pushing for offence... it’s probably a big reason why this team seems to struggle to build on any lead in a game and why the goal differential is so bad. When this team wins, it’s only by 1 goal. And when it loses, it’s by 2+ goals.
B) The crowd is virtually a non-factor at home games. The crowd feels nervous no matter the score. And deathly quiet to start games. It used to be a huge strength of the flames from 2004-2009... now I consider the tension from the crowd to be a weakness. Hopefully the team winning more will fix this but it’s been an issue for years even when the team is winning. I feel like the crowd needs to take it upon themselves to try to encourage the team early in the game rather than wait for the team to do something to get them going. Not trying to give the players a break or anything since they’re the ones on the ice but I feel like we as fans aren’t doing the best we can either and every little bit helps.
2. Poor powerplay
A) Lacks a goal-scoring right-handed winger who specializes in one-timers on the off-wing. Definitely would have taken a chance on Iginla earlier this season for this reason and because he would have helped bring some emotion to the team and the crowd at home.
B) After years of a poor powerplay, the coach that’s in charge of it needs to be changed. At this point, the players themselves would have to have lost confidence in his systems.
3. Lack of focus on scoring from majority of the line up
A) Having the majority of your forwards being players that contribute very little offensively - guys like stajan, Brouwer, frolik, Hathaway. They play safe hockey that coaches love but get lots of minutes while only generating low-quality shots on goal. I feel frolik is the biggest example of this. I like him as a 3rd/4th line player but not playing the number of minutes he gets. There are countless times where backlund and tkachuk are generating a play off the rush or on a cycle and frolik‘s go-to move when he gets the puck is to throw it at the net from anywhere... rarely resulting in goals. It’s ok to have a few of these types of players on the team... but in smaller roles. This team has rolled 4 lines fairly often over the years so having lots of these players who don’t score means they are on the ice a lot compared to other team’s 4th liners.
4. Hit the net!
A) This cannot be ignored and it could just as easily be a statistical anomaly for this season... but leading the league by a large margin in posts and missed shots on scoring is a big reason the flames are where they are now. To not capitalize on that many chances is unreal. Don’t know what the fix is for it but that can’t keep happening. In the same way the goalie cannot be letting in so many bad goals... the players can’t be missing so many chances.
Just my opinion on what I think needs to be considered from just watching the games. Like most of you I watch every game and judge it more but what I see and not just the stats.
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