[drewtastic]

I was at the game last night.

As a fan of this team since I was, like, seven (mid-80s anyway), I’ve come to expect disappointment, frustration, underachievement, or some combination of all of these things, especially for the larger part of the last three decades.

But last night was the first time I’d ever experienced legitimate anger.

From a personal perspective, my holiday season this year has been pretty awesome: lots of time with family and friends, great celebrations. New Year’s Day itself was also super-rad, and I couldn’t wait to go pick up my Dad and get to the Dome early.

Yesterday was only our second game of the season. The last several years, we’ve significantly reduced our share of OUR OWN season tickets due to cost/time commitment/team performance, but the New Year’s game has been a fifteen year plus tradition for us. (It’s also the only time I ever buy a beer at the game, to celebrate the New Year with my Dad.)

I’d actively rejected other New Year’s offers in anticipation of last night, given the annual meaning of the game, and the fact that the Dome is regularly rocking on that night. On that front, the fans more than held their own, as the place even went nuts at the introduction of George Canyon as the anthem singer. Indeed, the fans were amazing all night.

The first shift by the fourth line was also pretty decent, some energy and a pretty clear attempt to set the tempo.

After that, well...

The Flames were down by two before the ten minute mark of the first period. And the next several minutes of play featured offside after offside, pucks out of play, and general boredom. The Flames themselves simply refused to get the puck deep to cycle, so they averaged less than 10 seconds of offensive zone time for multiple shifts in a row. Buzzkill City.

Beyond that, the team had many stretches where they looked like they didn’t even have the slightest understanding of even the most basic defensive positioning; Stone/Kylington especially on D and the “guys-who-have-all-at-one-time-played-centre-so-you’d-think-they’d-have-some-degree-of-DZone-awareness” trio of Bennett/Monahan/Backlund was also frustratingly atrocious. The team deserved every inch of the loss, despite deciding to try when it was already too late.

Now, it’s not the loss itself, or the general pattern of losing lately that upsets me-I’m used to all that stuff as a Flames fan. What upset me last night was that, on a night when you KNOW the place is anticipating a fun time, when the fans are ALWAYS in good spirits, the majority of the players couldn’t get themselves prepared to play from the start.

I’ve always loved role players because they tend to be the lunch pail brigade that do the heavy lifting (Joel Otto is my all time fave; my current is Derek Ryan). But when your most engaged players are routinely the like of Ryan, Lucic, Rieder, or even Frolik (who I thought had a good game last night), your team will struggle. Certainly, those guys will have to be your BEST players in some games throughout a season, as sustainable winning requires depth. But they cannot be the ONLY guys willing to be engaged every night. Right now, they are.

Selfishly, I resented the team’s lethargy because I chose to attend the game at the expense of other events. That’s a self-pout that is more me venting than anything. But it’s definitely affecting my (already diminishing) interest in the team and my attendance going forward.

From the on-ice stand point, I have no idea as to what this team’s identity is. Beyond the “slow start”, “been through a lot”, “youth”, “still learning how to win”, “crawl, walk, run, sprint”, “still in a good spot in a weak division”, arguments, last night’s game revealed this teams’ inability to perform even the most basic tasks (like in-zone defensive awareness) consistently from game to game. It revealed the skilled players’ refusal to do the little things right (like chip and chase, where required). It revealed the old adage that hard work pays off, as Chicago’s early effort demonstrated, and like the Flames’ final five minutes demonstrated.

But commitment to basic fundamentals is, IMO, each individual player’s responsibility. I don’t know how any coach (four, in the past 6 years, as if I needed to remind anyone here) GM, owner or any other non-player in this organization can bear any blame for players not being ready to play, or for players not recognizing basic positioning on the ice, or for players making lazy back-checks. This stuff happens far too often with the top players on this team.

And especially on a night like last night, where the fan base was absolutely jacked and behind the team all night, it suggests to me that either some of these players CAN’T or simply WON’T push themselves into that next-level emotional space, when the situation calls for it.

I realize that I’m moving into old-man-yelling-at-cloud territory, but in some ways, I suppose the 80’s rivalry with the oilers has spoiled me and my attitude. In those particular games, it just seemed like every player on each team was determined to leave everything they had out on the ice, no matter what. Their emotional commitment levels caused us fans also to be hyper-emotionally invested...sometimes to the point of exhaustion! And these weren’t even playoff games! And it was all awesome!

From that perspective, I don’t understand how the core of this team cannot, altogether, capture, internalize and demonstrate at least a “next-gear” level of emotion, almost ever. I think it is this observation that most angered me last night. Maybe they just aren’t capable of it. Whatever the case, it’s turning me into a fair-weather fan, something I’d never have dreamed of saying even ten years ago.