Conspiracy against the Flames? Or are the fans crazy?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Geeoff

Reptilian globalists are turning our frogs gay with chemtrails! Longevity pills!!

Come on none of this is possibly true except in the minds of weirdo's. there is no such thing as reptilians, nor chemtrails. By the way, did you happen to watch all of the Flames highlights from the Saddledome in Calgary?

[Infinit47]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Even granting your premise, there is no way that the Anaheim freaking Ducks could ever, in your wildest imaginings, be considered a "pet franchise" for the NHL.

Moreover, in this specific case, there is no strategic reason for preferring a Ducks victory over a Flames victory. The possibility of a Battle of Alberta series featuring Connor McDavid would have everyone at the league office salivating.

I get the "blame the refs" thing as a matter of venting frustration, but leave it at that. Don't convince yourself it's an actual thing. It was 4-1. They lost the game themselves.

The NHL could care less about a battle of Alberta. Like it or not this is an American league and makes decisions accordingly.

They know Calgary will always sell tickets, and the Canadian tv contract is locked down. Anaheim on the other hand needs to sell tickets to remain a viable franchise.

Disagree? Why does the league continue to subsidize American markets that are a joke, and fight tooth and nail against a second team in Southern Ontario or Quebec city? It's to Maintain the balance of American control in the league.

[Badgers Nose]

It's just a bad league running a great sport.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

The NHL could care less about a battle of Alberta. Like it or not this is an American league and makes decisions accordingly.

A battle of Alberta is a marketable series featuring the league's most marketable player. In other words, it generates talk and viewership outside of the local markets for the teams involved. Better yet, because of time zones, it doesn't conflict with your major east coast markets, and given that the Kings aren't in this year, there's nothing lost out west, either. It's a choice between that and the Ducks, which have a relatively small fanbase localized in one region. From the standpoint of US networks, given who McDavid plays for, it's found money.

Disagree? Why does the league continue to subsidize American markets that are a joke, and fight tooth and nail against a second team in Southern Ontario or Quebec city? It's to Maintain the balance of American control in the league.

This is wrong. The reason there isn't a team in Quebec City or Hamilton is almost entirely due to the power and influence of MLSE and Geoff Molson. In Quebec's case, it's also a matter of the roughly 500,000 people who live there. In Hamilton's, it's also a matter of crippling the Sabres. The fact is that you don't create any new hockey fans by putting new teams in Canada, you take existing hockey fans who are customers of existing teams and shift them over to a new team. This isn't a conspiracy against Canada; it's a league run by ownership who don't want to give up large slices of their pie.

[MarkGio]

I wouldn't go as far as to say conspiracy, but the league has done some shady #### over the years. Such as the text message thing with Wideman and the emails regarding concussions and Bettman threatening former refs for speaking out. Not to mention Bettman wouldn't do another CBC interview after Ron McLean grilled him on the health of some franchises.

I think it's also partly due to incompetency. Like how they mess up things like GameCentre and player suspensions.

[ThisIsAnOutrage]

Gibson underinflates the puck to help keep rebounds under control...

[Macindoc]

Originally Posted by ThisIsAnOutrage

Gibson underinflates the puck to help keep rebounds under control...

And overinflates his massive jersey...

[dustygoon]

No way is the league conspiring against this team.

But i can see the refs doing it which is an entirely different entity with different incentives.

[MisterJoji]

Not a conspiracy, just very inept on ice officiating and war room officiating. It's not just our series, the officiating has been very poor/inconsistent in almost every series.

[djsFlames]

I think there are people in the offices and a handful of refs that do not sympathize with the Flames. Maybe some that know the sufferer of the Wideman incident well that haven't forgotten, and some that are taking note of the comments and complaints coming from management. But that's as far as it goes.

No one is going out of their way to give them breaks, where if we were Arizona or someone else they might be more open to offering one or two. But that's not egregious enough to call a full on conspiracy, because the calls can be argued in either favour based on different reasonings.

Do I think they have ####ed up a call or two? Yeah. I honestly think a few people in the Toronto review office haven't done their jobs correctly the past two games because their reasoning has not been in line with what was called/said on the ice, which leads me to believe that they're not giving this series its due diligence, and that makes me angry. But there is no league wide objective to actively block the team from succeeding.

[Infinit47]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

A battle of Alberta is a marketable series featuring the league's most marketable player. In other words, it generates talk and viewership outside of the local markets for the teams involved. Better yet, because of time zones, it doesn't conflict with your major east coast markets, and given that the Kings aren't in this year, there's nothing lost out west, either. It's a choice between that and the Ducks, which have a relatively small fanbase localized in one region. From the standpoint of US networks, given who McDavid plays for, it's found money.

This is wrong. The reason there isn't a team in Quebec City or Hamilton is almost entirely due to the power and influence of MLSE and Geoff Molson. In Quebec's case, it's also a matter of the roughly 500,000 people who live there. In Hamilton's, it's also a matter of crippling the Sabres. The fact is that you don't create any new hockey fans by putting new teams in Canada, you take existing hockey fans who are customers of existing teams and shift them over to a new team. This isn't a conspiracy against Canada; it's a league run by ownership who don't want to give up large slices of their pie.

The NHL has repeatedly stated that the Maple Leafs and Canadians have no veto or territorial rights. and QC's metropolitan area has 800k people, which it more than enough to support a team in a hockey crazy market. And in a ticket revenue driven sport it's clear that QC and southern Ontario residents are not being monetized nearly enough. So it's not about shifting portions of a pie, it's about actually taking money from people in Canada who would love nothing more than to give it to the NHL and making the pie bigger.

Which is why these decisions aren't based in economics but rather it's all about the balance of power, buy America, US first, protectionist mentality.

And yes Western games don't conflict with Eastern games, but the reality is that time zone is asleep when Western games are played and the East could care less who is playing. Regarding McDavid, the league doesn't really care who he plays as long as he's on the ice and they can say his name repeatedly. With that said I think they would prefer him to be viewable to US fans so they can pretend they will grow in the US...because bigger is always better, just like General Motors amazing business model, which is why the NHL expands to cities like Las Vegas while they have 10 existing franchises that are struggling....Don't worry about Pontiac, this new brand Saturn will save the day.

The idea that this league can "create" hockey fans is why it is so poorly run, and is the kind of concept that gets repeatedly laughed at is business schools. You don't create customers, you identify them, identify their needs and find new or better ways to service those needs. Bigger is not better, profitable is better. Would you rather be Air Canada or WestJet?

Additional teams in Canada monetizes existing fans that are woefully under monetized, instead of wasting money chasing unicorns in the southern US. Ticket sales drive significant revenue in the NHL, and we all know that Carolina, either Florida team, the Ducks, or the Coyotes do not sell more tickets than a Quebec city team would.

To the topic of this thread, I don't think that Bettman sits in the control room and makes these calls. But I think the league has a culture of favourites as previously suggested, and any Canadian team outside of TO and Montreal (when not playing a big US favourite) falls well below ANY US team when it comes to calls that could go either way.

Big companies or unions or any group of people have a culture. I think the NHL has an America first culture, and it manifests itself in teams like Calgary getting the short end of the stick more often than not.

Tinfoil hat off.

[Flamescuprun2018]

No conspiracy, perhaps a missed call here and there for both sides.
We had 5 PPs last night to 0 SH.

The series failure is all about goaltending.

Recognizing a limited sample size. We have the last (17th) ranked goalie in the playoffs this year. Oilers have the 3rd ranked goalie. The GSAA is very telling. Elliott has given up 4 more goals than league average for number of shots faced and Talbot has saved 3 goals more than league average for number of shots faced.

If we had Talbot level goaltending in this series we would have given up 7 fewer goals and be leading 3-0 in the series!

I cannot believe our misfortune with goalie signings. Elliott was 0.930 SAA in regular season and 0.921 in playoffs last year. Does make me wonder a bit about our goalie coach.

Blues really got it right with Jake Allen over Elliott it would seem.


Rk Player GA SA SV SV% GAA SO MIN GSAA
1 Jake Allen 3 117 114 .974 0.91 0 198 5.36
2 Pekka Rinne 2 95 93 .979 0.61 2 197 4.79
3 Cam Talbot 3 83 80 .964 0.98 2 183 2.93
4 MAF 6 109 103 .945 1.87 0 193 1.79
5 Lundqvist 7 118 111 .941 2.16 1 194 1.43
6 Carey Price 5 89 84 .944 1.53 0 196 1.36
7 Bernier 0 16 16 1.000 0.00 0 33 1.14
8 Martin Jones 5 77 72 .935 1.66 0 181 0.50
9 F Andersen 9 120 111 .925 2.47 0 219 -0.42
10 Dubnyk 6 78 72 .923 1.87 0 193 -0.43
11 Holtby 10 116 106 .914 2.74 0 219 -1.71
12 John Gibson 8 85 77 .906 3.22 0 149 -1.92
13 Crawford 9 98 89 .908 2.77 0 195 -2.00
14 Anderson 8 74 66 .892 2.58 0 186 -2.71
15 Tuukka Rask 9 88 79 .898 2.89 0 187 -2.71
16 Bobrovsky 11 107 96 .897 3.49 0 189 -3.35
17 Brian Elliott 11 97 86 .887 3.67 0 180 -4.07

Source: http://www.hockey-reference.com/play...7_goalies.html

[btimbit]

Full blown conspiracy? No. I think it's just sheer incompetence and Calgary has been unlucky enough to seemingly get it the worst this year

That incompetence needs to be addressed though. The way the NHL handles stuff like reviews and officiating is horrible

[AC]

Definitely no conspiracy. Just incompetence at every level.

Call it human error or refusal to use common sense, but its easy to see at every level of the NHL.

[Barca]

I don't know how there would be a conspiracy against Calgary when they had the only PPs in the game.

the 3rd goal was too inconclusive either way so the call on the ice stands.

if there is a conspiracy the flames players must be involved too cause they blew a 4-1 lead. lol

no conspiracy here.

[djsFlames]

Originally Posted by AC

Definitely no conspiracy. Just incompetence at every level.

Call it human error or refusal to use common sense, but its easy to see at every level of the NHL.

From allowing the lottery to go to the same team 4x/6 years to expanding when some existing teams can't even be self sustaining to having to relying on poor cameras to determine a goal but not logic/deduction. And not to mention disallowing the best players in their sport to represent their countries at the olympics.

A lot of things need to be altered or improved.

[Parallex]

Conspiracy against the Flames? Or are the fans crazy?

Neither. I don't believe there are mustache twirling villains plotting our demise in NY/Toronto... but I do believe that there is (or was) some unconscious bias on the refs part (Wideman Effect) and I think the war room may have been engaging in "game management" last night.

[Dion]

[lazypucker]

The refs are already trying to help the Flames last night by not calling any penalties on them. It's the Flames who shot themslves in the foot.

[AC]

Originally Posted by lazypucker

The refs are already trying to help the Flames last night by not calling any penalties on them. It's the Flames who shot themslves in the foot.

Well, Carlyle flat out said the Ducks didn't deserve any PPs.