I will gladly take a healthy heaping pile of crow. I was openly critical of Gulutzan, Monahan, Gaudreau, Ferland, Stajan, and Chiasson. I was completely and utterly wrong. The entire team completely 180'd and I couldn't be happier. There is a lot of belief in that locker room, it's pretty cool to see.
Everyone worked through the struggles and ironed out the kinks and the Flames are a hell of a team!
At the time we'd lost four in a row, were 4-10-2, miserable defense and brutal special teams numbers.
Now it's playoffs baby!
The Flames were 5-6-1 as they hit the 4 game losing streak.
Can't believe I'm quoting Mike Keenan when asked about Gulutzan earlier in the season: "You have to give a new coach 17-20 games to implement his system."
Flames record after the first 20 games was 8-11-1. Since that time they have gone 36-19-3.
More impressed with the record since the beating in Toronto and Montreal of 20-6-1. Tops in the NHL.
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I am guilty of throwing Cameron under the bus. When the PP was bad over the first 20 games or so - and let's call a spade a spade, it was fricking putrid - I was calling for Cameron's head.
That was wrong of me. And frankly, I knew it at the time. But Kittens! Things were going so horribly that we had to stick a pitch fork into somebody. And I chose Cameron.
So, sorry dude.
What an amazing turn around the Flames pulled off! And credit for that lies squarely on the shoulders of the coaching staff.
I was a loss or two away from pulling a Cali and asking the mods for a username change to FireGulutzan or HireGilbert. Very happy I didn't do that and the season turned around.
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But I said I was done with Elliot after the 2nd or 3rd Vancouver game, when miller stole the game, Elliot gave up 3 goals on 12 shots or something. He made a comment after the game about the team giving up too many scoring chances.
I'll eat crow on that, as I'm down for a 5yr deal for Elliot, at 25-30M.
I want to say that I was right about every damn thing I said this season, so don't try to passive-aggressively shove some disgusting bird in my mouth. LOL I'm joking, I'm glad to say that I was wrong about this team's fortunes. Go Flames!
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The Flames will finish the season right where I thought they would be before the season started. How they got there though was a little bit weird though.
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Definitely did not like the coach and his systems at the beginning of the year and was vocal. You can't deny he was all over the map.
Elliott was terrible but so was the systems execution and defence.
For the crow eaters and fans it was very hard to watch the team play.
The systems, the play and the buy in started much slower then we expected. Johnson carried us through a tough time and then we started slowly flourishing.
The Flames didn't back down from a fight. Down two goals, they just kept executing to comeback and win.
For whatever reason, and I don't know why this team is always the best underdog. We beat the best, play with the rest and lose to the worst. However, for the first time in many many years we have a neutral zone trap, we have compete, we don't give up and we play hard.
We also carry the puck across the line in every instance we can except for a line change. That's nice.
Happy to eat crow. But man, that was a tough season, especially at the beginning. For any true fan, it's not a shot in the foot to be upset about the start and to question everything. I can imagine for the team it's that intensity times 10 which a great way to start a playoff run.
Last edited by calgarywinning; 04-01-2017 at 02:03 AM.
I don't think people need to be too worried about eating crow re this team.
For the first 40ish games this year, it was one of the least entertaining/convincing performances by any Flames team ever. They were awful, and the games were largely unwatchable. If anything, I think the Flames owe us GCL/Center Ice users a refund for the first half of the season.
I'll take a Stanley Cup in lieu of an apology though
I will admit to one thing though: I was wrong about Dougie Hamilton. Dude rules.
I'll eat crow too. But, if anything, our complaining just proves we're not fairweather fans.
We hate to see our Flames lose, and we're not going to sit by and say nothing while the team was losing. Especially when there were glaring holes in the PP, player deployments or goaltending.
Unlike Edmonton, there's no culture of losing here, so we don't accept losses nor tanking to get 1st overall draft picks to kick off the next rebuild.
The coaching staff and players have made the right adjustments at the right time to turn things around, in a remarkable way.
As fans, we've made our complaints heard this season when the chips were down. Now let's go make some noise the playoffs.
Last edited by shadowlord; 04-01-2017 at 03:17 AM.
A Hamilton sized helping please.
I never doubted his hockey ability.
I bought into the personality narratives going around.
From his visits in costume to the children's hospital to 'photo bomb' Dougie, obviously all that was 100% crap.
