[Gaudfather]

Good article here on the Flames hot start!

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/584...conroy-lebrun/

Our season preview crew at The Athletic, for example, picked the Flames to finish 28th this season. And to be fair, that could obviously still happen.

But comeback wins on the road in Vancouver and Edmonton, which sandwiched a home win over Philadelphia, were an early-season message. Yes, they’re a team in transition, a team with obvious deficiencies, but the Flames also appear to be a tight-knit group with a gigantic chip on their shoulder.

“Oh, absolutely,” Flames general manager Craig Conroy told The Athletic on Monday. “You know, I talked to the guys before the season. ‘Hey, we’re in this together, I see where everyone is picking us and what they’re saying.’

“You know what it’s like when people say you can’t do something. ‘OK. We’ll show you.'”

But perhaps the best sight of all so far for Calgary? Jonathan Huberdeau has three goals and two assists in the opening three games and looks like a new man.

Huberdeau was better late last season, but the burden of that contract paying him $10.5 million per season often seemed too much to handle. It would be a wonderful story for the old Huberdeau to re-emerge this season.

“At the end of last year, he said, ‘Hey, I’m going to change up some things I’m going to do,'” Conroy said. “He’s talked to our strength coach (and) changed up how he trained in the summer.”

Flames head coach Ryan Huska went to meet with Huberdeau in Montreal this summer.

“They had a real good conversation,” said Conroy. “They talked about doing more, killing penalties, things like that. And he’s been on our penalty kill doing a great job.”

One key area Huska and Huberdreau talked about, Conroy added, was the work away from the puck.

“He’s working. He’s making plays. He’s going hard to the net,” Conroy said. “He’s going to the hard areas. And I think that was something him and the coaches had talked about.

“He wants to do well here. He puts a lot of pressure on himself. So it’s just good to see him go out there and play his game and have some success. Because he cares.”

“It’s three games, but they’ve played well, they’ve stuck up for each other, they’ve competed hard,” Conroy said. “And generally it’s a good feeling around the locker room.