Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinny01
It is getting harder to see this team falling off completely. It will be interesting to see if Conroy can add that long term piece to help offensively to perhaps allow this team to score more and be stronger this year. I see no short term moves made but I am curious to see how aggressive Conroy is at making long term moves before the offseason.
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I am excited that the team is in the playoffs but it is not that hard to see them drop into the top 10 of the draft. There is only 6 points between our current spot in the second WC to being in the top 10 of the draft.
Based on our strong home performance and not-so-good road performance, January and March will be very telling. January has 8 road games to 6 home games and March has 10 road games to 5 home games.
Looking at our current record:
Home: 13-4-3 = 29 of 40 possible points = 72.5% points earned on 20 games
Away: 5-8-4 = 14 of 34 possible points = 41.2% points earned on 17 games
If the team continues the above trends then we will probably be closer to the top 10 of the draft than the playoffs by the trade deadline. There are 26 games in that timeframe with 11 at home and 15 on the road (and the 6 game road trip from Feb 25 to Mar 6 will be particularly interesting).
Following the above numbers, we'd potentially get 16/22 points in the home games (yay) and 12/30 points on the road (ack!) and the increased amount of road games would likely put us outside of the playoffs. At that point it would just be a matter of becoming sellers and seeing if that results in a top 10 draft pick by the end of the season.
Anyway, I do hope that Huska has a plan to get more road wins.... but I can definitely see a path for the Flames to drop down the standings based on the increased percentage of road games between now and Mar 7.
For anyone curious, after Mar 7 we have 19 games (10H, 9A). March has tougher competition (7 playoff teams, 4 bottom feeders) and April has a lighter schedule with 3 playoff teams and 5 bottom feeders (including double ducks and double sharks).