Spector on NHL: Make it or break it
Posted March 25, 2011 10:05 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
LEDUC, Alta — Jay Bouwmeester might just be the metaphor that best fits what this playoff run says about the Calgary Flames’ big picture.
As much as we watch Bouwmeester play, through eight National Hockey League seasons he has yet to play in a playoff game. And in this past trip through California, where the Flames gathered just two of a possible six points, the rangy defenceman went pointless with a big old minus-6 next to his name.
“Some ups and downs, for whatever reason, I don’t know,” said the effusive Bouwmeester when asked on Friday, after the Flames practice in the Edmonton suburb of Leduc. “That’s the way it’s gone.”
“In San Jose he just wasn’t himself,” added Flames head coach Brent Sutter. “Caught out of position too much, maybe thinking the game too much instead of just relaxing and playing.”
So is Bouwmeester is a winner who just happens to play for losing teams all the time?
Or does the fact he is their highest paid defenceman and plays some of his worst hockey on the most crucial road trips of the season, mean he is one of the reasons the Flames are on the outside looking in right now?
Then there is the team itself.
Is this a good, playoff caliber roster that just needs a few tweaks to take the next step to being a Cup contender?
Or, if Calgary can not overcome the games in hand that Dallas, Anaheim and Chicago have on them, will acting GM Jay Feaster begin the big teardown at the 2011 draft?
What is the answer? You’re not going to get it out of this dressing room right now.
“I think we have to win out. We need 12 points,” Feaster said on Friday, the day before his club played game No. 77 of the season against the Edmonton Oilers at Rexall Place.
“Our goal is to win them all, starting with Edmonton on Saturday night,” said captain Jarome Iginla.
So it’s unanimous. Calgary needs to run the table to overcome the games played column that has put a knot in every Flames fan’s stomach for the past month.
“We do think it’s possible,” Iginla continued. “We know we need to be better than we’ve been playing. We know our time is running out. We need to get winning.”
Three weeks ago we said that with both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Calgary Flames hanging around on either side of the playoff cut-off line in their respective Conferences, history told us only one team was likely to advance to the post-season.
And we took a ton of heat — particularly from Leafs fans — for suggesting that both couldn’t do it.
Well, taking a look at the standings this morning, we might just be wrong after all, because right now neither team is in the driver’s seat for a playoff spot.
“We still think we can do it,” said Iginla, whose next goal will give him an incredible eighth 35-goal campaign. “We understand the odds are against us and you can understand fans thinking that it’s slim hopes. We’ll start with one game, try and get the game with Edmonton. Then load up for the next one.”
The Flames, as of today, have the highest payroll in the NHL and they don’t have a draft pick in the second or third rounds of the June draft.
Deposed GM Darryl Sutter left Feaster with $58 million in payroll already committed for next season — more than any other NHL team.
Oh, and they are the second oldest team in the NHL as well, with an average of age of higher than 29 years.
If Calgary does not win its last six games and make the playoffs, you can take all of the above and put it in front of the qualifier, for a team that didn’t make the playoffs this year.
And if they do make it?
“My best experience so far was the year we made it in the second last game of the season,” Staios said of 2006, when he was with the Oilers. “We went to the Stanley Cup final that year. You just want to make it into the dance and see what happens from there.”
That has been the Flames’ theory ever since they went to the final pre-lockout Stanley Cup in ’04. Calgary has rolled the playoff dice in four of the five years since, but crapped out every time in the first round.
This year, the odds don’t look so great.
It’s a trend Feaster is going to have to deal with, sooner or later in Calgary.
