Top 3 frustrations and top 3 positives on the season so far

[Knightslayer]

Positives:

1. Team play in the defensive zone
2. Goaltending has been very good
3. Being in pretty much every game this season

Frustrations:

1. Rasmus being allergic to shooting and getting top pp time
2. O.T deployment of players
3. Monahan's slow start (he seems to be getting better)

HM: Backlund playing soft no contact hockey

[Pizza]

The biggest pretender with a quarter season in would no doubt be the Edmonton Oilers

[Sainters7]

Originally Posted by Pizza

The biggest pretender with a quarter season in would no doubt be the Edmonton Oilers

Yeah. The entire team is 2 players and the power play, it's ridiculous

[Flame On]

Positives:

1. Compete level (they're pretty much in every game)
2. Goaltending
3. Grittier and harder to play against

Frustrations:

1. Continued lack of top 6 finishing and Offensive woes
2. Not sure the 3rd pairing D results warrant the apparent lack of trying out Valimaki. I.e. sticking with Zadorov.
3. Our C's –, Backlund's and Monahan's play/effectiveness sometimes. Which might be tied to 1.

HM: Their grueling schedule

[Domoic]

Pos

1. Goaltending
2. Eat Bread
3. Johnny H. back to normal

Neg

1. Losing Season Opener
2. Losing Home Opener
3. Losing to Canadian Teams

[N-E-B]

Positives:

1. Overall compete level. This team hasn’t been blown out in any game and I think deserved to win several of their losses. They seem mentally tougher and don’t spiral as easily as they have in the past.
2. The 1st line looks to be having a bounce back season.
3. Outstanding goaltending from both guys. Markstrom is in the vezina conversation for sure and could be argued as the front runner.

Frustrations:
1. Overtime. Why are we so bad in overtime? Oiler fans can harp on the loser points all they want, but in reality that’s just 6 points we’ve lost because of futility in overtime.
2. Valimaki. Both a combination of his poor play and the organizations unwillingness to play him over Zadorov who has been poor as well.
3. The fact that the team is 15-6-6, in 1st place in their division, 2nd in the conference, and I am 0-6 when watching them live. I haven’t seen them win live in nearly 2 years. Come on man!

[Goriders]

Positives:

- goaltending has been lights out
- players have bought into the system and have committed to working hard.
- first line is awesome.

Negatives:

- third line is a continual work in progress
- 3 on 3 record is not the best. Which is surprising.
- lack of a captain. Not sure this team has an obvious leader

[Heavy Jack]

Positives:

1.Darryl Sutter run team has some big players finally playing to their potential and has allowed for the emergence of Kylington. Having both special teams performing in the top 10 to this point has been incredible.

2.Road warriors and a road warrior in Mangiapane. Incredible performances in some tough buildings and gruelling eastern swings has been huge in setting the team up for success as they march into the meat of the schedule.

3.Goaltending and the shutouts have been truly amazing to watch. It’s funny what great goaltending can accomplish for a team and it’s been sorely lacking stability for so long here.

Frustrations:

1.Slow starts offensively for Backlund, Monahan and Coleman have held this team up from being truly elite this year up until this point.

2.Handling of Valimaki is becoming puzzling and is reminding me of Baertschi to a degree. It’s disappointing from both sides, hate to see Valimaki pouting and at the same time I feel like he should have drawn in a few more games up until now.

3.Tkachuk, Gaudreau, Mangiapane all not being figured out contract wise heading into the season. I could understand two but to have all three of those players long term contracts not cemented and now all having paces of either career years or best year in a while is going to prove to be costly for GM Treliving. Adding in Kylington to that mix just further complicates things, it’s the 3rd frustration I’ve noted of the 3 asked but it’s by far the most annoying frustration of the bunch for me.

[DJones]

Positive:
1. Consistency, rarely taken periods off which was my biggest concern in previous years.
2. Goaltending
3. Defensive depth. Not a Zadorov fan but if he's your biggest problem as a #6 you're alright.

Negatives
1. Valimaki not earning a spot
2. 3rd line being disappointing. Monahan and Dube can be better
3. Want to see a bit more offense from Rasmus and Hanifin. Having to reach here though honestly.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Positives:

1. Team play and work ethic: Everyone has bought in and works damn hard. Seeing both Gaudreau and Tkachuk play a strong 200 foot game is a revelation.
2. Team defense: Very few lapses in strong defensive play, and teammates work hard to pick each other up when a mistake happens. Goaltending has been very strong to support the skaters.
3. Higher than anticipated offensive production. They've dropped a little recently, but are still top half of the league on GF/G and have a top 10 power play.

Negatives
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I don't really have any to be honest. Based on the personnel, this team is exceeding expectations. All the individuals have come as advertised or much better than previous viewings. The only one who hasn't is Zadorov (who I thought would be a top 4 guy), but that's evened by the play of Gudbranson who has been a nice surprise so far.

Now, that being said, I think this team needs at least one more great shooter to finish some plays. Everything else is there.

[FBI]

Pretty disappointed in Coleman so far.. He's playing well defensively but was expecting SOME offense..

[Enoch Root]

Team is good
Team is entertaining
Team is in first place

Hard to find negatives with that

[djsFlames]

Also wanted production (particularly scoring) out of Coleman so we could have bragging rights over the slightly more expensive Hyman signing. So far, ZH has the edge.

Really would like to see our middle six forwards have a little run of production. Once every fifth game or so won't cut it. (Exception of bread, whos been great)

Lucic, Bread and the top line have carried things offensively. Won't take a rocket scientist to tell you we're going to need more than that.

[Knightslayer]

Originally Posted by djsFlames

Also wanted production (particularly scoring) out of Coleman so we could have bragging rights over the slightly more expensive Hyman signing. So far, ZH has the edge.
than that.

Does he though? One has 16 points, gets top pp time and plays with McDavid and gets dominated 5 on 5 and is a -4 while the other gets 3rd line duties, no pp time and plays great defence and is a +6 with 7 points.

I think I know which ones contributing to winning.

[GranteedEV]

+ The play of the top 5 defensemen. Can't ask for more from them outside of some PP1 production. Kylington in particular has altered the entire style of play of the team from a year ago.

+ The overall 200-foot play of Gaudreau, Lindholm, Mangiapane, Tkachuk, and Lucic at forward. Coleman and Backlund have been okay too, but I'd hope they have another gear as they've been pretty invisible offensively.

+ The structure + solid goaltending keeping GAA well down.

- Continued lack of a truly elite centre. Carolina has Aho. Tampa has Point. Edmonton has McDavid. Vegas should have Eichel. Colorado has MacKinnon. Florida has Barkov. Toronto has Matthews. Even non-elite divisional opponents like Anaheim and Vancouver have Zegras and Pettersson on the up. It sucks to consistently be outclassed in that area. At least Monahan miraculously won the Zegras matchup last time though. Still feels like we're "Wild North" or "Rangers West" rather than a legit contender, despite the strong overall play.

- Compressed schedule. Feels like the Flames have had very little time off outside of the first week or two. They haven't looked sharp in a while which is probably due to a lack of rest and practice time.

- Not enough faith in the prospects to test their mettle. It sure seems like these other teams have a lot more GP by callups. Last year shows that the Flames will play their vets through anything. At absolute best they've played one of Ruzicka/Duehr/Gawdin as exclusively 8 minute fourth liners. I'd extend that to Dube as a centre... he was starting to look good in that role but it was abandoned just as he was getting a hang of it. And while Valimaki hasn't blown the roof off, I thought he was playing well towards the end of the 5 game winning streak and then got buried pretty unfairly.

[Gaskal]

Positives: Most things

Negatives:

The hockey gods have decreed that Darryl Sutter hockey is too powerful for the likes of this league and have seen fit to balance the scales with horrendous puck luck at home, where he is most powerful.

[Macho0978]

Pros:

1. Having a great coach that has this team working and paying hard a very high percentage of periods this season
2. Internal growth and development of our players. This team is really is being saved by players like Kylington and Magniapane. Kylington has stabilzed the top 2 defense pairings and Managiapane is giving this team depth scoring. The Heat could be producing depth too if we have injuries.
3. Our first line is elite. Conversation all off season is the lack of elite talent. Maybe we don't have 1 guy that is elite but that first line is dominating.

Cons:

1. Monahan line - Dube Monahan and Lucic may change this as they have been good of late but his line continues to hold this team back
2. We haven't signed 4 very important players.
3. Can't seem to win in OT. Our record could be tops in the NHL if we could have stole of few more points in OT. It would be nice to be 8-10 points up on the Oilers too

[scobel]

Positives:
Darryl Sutter
Johnny Hockey
Oliver Kylington emergence
Negative:
Valimaki had opportunities just look at kylington, needed to push through.
2nd and 3rd line consistency, seems like players are not syncing. 4th line has played well with Lewis and Richardson
Finding ways to win in overtime have had some great games and comebacks to get a point, need to be more consistent at getting 2

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Heavy Jack

Positives:

1.Darryl Sutter run team has some big players finally playing to their potential and has allowed for the emergence of Kylington. Having both special teams performing in the top 10 to this point has been incredible.

2.Road warriors and a road warrior in Mangiapane. Incredible performances in some tough buildings and gruelling eastern swings has been huge in setting the team up for success as they march into the meat of the schedule.

3.Goaltending and the shutouts have been truly amazing to watch. It’s funny what great goaltending can accomplish for a team and it’s been sorely lacking stability for so long here.

Frustrations:

1.Slow starts offensively for Backlund, Monahan and Coleman have held this team up from being truly elite this year up until this point.

2.Handling of Valimaki is becoming puzzling and is reminding me of Baertschi to a degree. It’s disappointing from both sides, hate to see Valimaki pouting and at the same time I feel like he should have drawn in a few more games up until now.

3.Tkachuk, Gaudreau, Mangiapane all not being figured out contract wise heading into the season. I could understand two but to have all three of those players long term contracts not cemented and now all having paces of either career years or best year in a while is going to prove to be costly for GM Treliving. Adding in Kylington to that mix just further complicates things, it’s the 3rd frustration I’ve noted of the 3 asked but it’s by far the most annoying frustration of the bunch for me.

I agree with almost all of this. But it was always my feeling that Sven was the problem with Sven (though Hartley also didn't handle him well). I trust Sutter a lot more than Hartley, Desjardins, or Green to figure out Valimaki.

I did expect more offence out of Coleman and Monahan. Backlund - well, we say the same every year and he always ends up with the same points more or less. Though this year it's puzzling how Mangiapane can have so many goals and Backlund and Coleman havd so few assists.

[1qqaaz]

Positives:

1. General consistency and mental fortitude on a game-by-game basis
2. Goaltending (both Markstrom and Vladar). Heck, the prospects too
3. Mangiapane and Kylington

Frustrations:

1. Coleman's contract
2. O.T deployment of players
3. Zary has been underwhelming

I guess I'm thankful that the Flames have had very few injuries. Back in the Brent Sutter days, players, especially defensemen, were injured left and right.