I think those of us who are reluctant to "jump on the bandwagon" if you will, reluctant to come out and say "Wow, this team is amazing." are that way because we've been burned season after season for a long long time here. The team has been inconsistent, has shown flashes of awesome, has a few times shown more than that, and the result has been a bad playoff performance or a near miss.
Yes, this team feels different. They've hardly lost at all, they had a poor chunk after Christmas Covid, and occassionally look lost against fast teams like the Leafs, but they've been winning. And winning games like the Leafs, VGK, Dallas, that probably they would have lost in the last few years.
So forgive us if we aren't jumping out of our seats at every game, we are once bitten twice shy. Or ten times bitten twice shy. AND we still see that this team has some major problems. The bottom 6 aren't great (Ruzicka might be the biggest thing to happen to this team this year, as big a deal as Kylington) and need improving. I'd keep Lewis but Pitlick, Ritchie, at this point Dube, sadly at this point Monahan, they're all expendable.
But goaltending is fine. Defense looking fine after a slightly wobbly start for a few guys. Tanev's brilliant, Gudbrandson reliable, Zadorov dangerous for both teams.... and the top line is simply great.
If "Second Half Backs" shows up, and it's looking like that... the team might make some noise, and I'm excited about it. But do I have etched-in-the-skin Flames-can-do-no-wrong mania? No.
A bad season here and BT was maybe toast. After this year the are having... probably not. I don't think it's easy being GM in a place people haven't been excited to come to. Maybe that's changing.
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