Quote:
Originally Posted by TheScorpion
Tbh I disagree, Ricardo. For my money, this is the toughest Flames team in years.
Tkachuk
Bennett
Lucic
Hamonic
Andersson
Rinaldo
Giordano
Stone
These are all pretty tough customers... and then you have guys like Ryan, Dube, Lindholm, etc who are scrappy guys and put up with a lot of stuff and are still really effective players.
Johnny is easy to focus on for some teams but I think putting Tkachuk and Lindholm on an entirely separate "top line" makes it a lot harder for teams to devote all their energy to stopping one single scoring unit.
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This group of scrappy guys gets out hit by a significant margin in a high percentage of their games.
There is Gaudreau, Ryan, Jankowski, Rieder, Brodie, Frolik who rarely inflict a hit on an opposing player. That is 6 out of the Flames starting 18!!
This season Gio and Hamonic are not hitting on a regular basis. Hamonic stopped hitting right after he got hurt in the fight with Gudbranson the start of last season.
There would be only one team in the whole league that would not go into a playoff series with the Flames planning on physically imposing their will on the Flames.
Carolina would look at the Flames and figure they were just so much faster that they wouldn't have to beat up on the Flames.