Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
The difference between a Wildcard and a Division spot is often a couple points, and a single win in an 82-game season. I don't disagree that the Flames should be expected to start breaking in to the top group, but the margin of error is so slim in this league that the difference between "bubble teams" and "playoff teams" is pretty negligible.
This is simply not true. Through most of the season the Flames were keeping pace with SJ, LA, and Anaheim and all four were jockeying between #2 in the Division and the #2 WC.
The season ended bad for a variety of reasons, but it is disingenuous to sell short how competitive the Flames were through most of it.
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Honestly if I look back at the season there was just a gut feeling every night that one part of our game wouldn’t show up
Let’s say there are 5 aspects of hockey:
Attacking
Defending
Goaltending
Power play
Penalty kill
There were only a handful of games (10 or so) where the flames had 4/5 of these aspects going full cylinder
I think there’s about 4 games arguably where all 5 were clicking at or near 90% or better (90% of potentially as good as possible)
This team was very inconsistent and it changed from game to game which aspects would be o and which would be off.
And I think it’s those games where a team has only 2 or 3 of the facets working properly is where coaching and tactics come in.
This to me is where a better tactician would’ve been able to squeeze more Ws out of this group and where I don’t think they were completely doing a good job. If we’re really sucking at attacking, adjust and try something new, if goaltending sucks, go to the backup, etc.
I dunno if anyone else agrees but his is kinda how I’ve broken down the eye test this season and tried to make sense of what or how the flames played and honestly consistency was the biggest thing lacking and I never really felt like the flames were truly inthe hunt most of the season and the majority of wins felt like they were lucky wins as opposed to being confidence building efforts of total domination