Top Five Reasons Why the Flames Lost in the First Round
For most Calgary Flames fans three days is enough time to get over the early first round exit. After the shock disappears the questions start flying about what to do and why they did it. Here is the first of many articles about the Flames this season and next.
I know you're saying to yourself, 'just five?!' but we had to keep it to five or risk never ending.
Top 5 Reasons Calgary Lost Round One 2007
5. Poor defensive zone coverage. This was probably a systems thing, but all to often in the final games we found ourself hemmed into our own end on 5v5. We could not adjust to cover the points or win battles down low.
4. Speaking of battles down low, where was the grit? The huge hits? The crashing and banging and chipping and hacking? Where was the crashing the net, bowling over Hasek, borderline charging, and so on? The grit of this team went down considerably from their successful run in 2004 and didn't really change since 2006. That's cause for concern. This team is more skilled but is missing 3-4 players with significant size and speed just to crash and bang.
3. Inability to adjust in gameplay or pre-game. This is a coaching thing. All season you noted that we couldn't adjust on the fly as well as previous years. I would attribute this to first year coach Playfair. I'm not throwing him under the bus, but it was evident. The same thing happened in the playoffs. When your special teams in games 3-4 dominate but disappear in 5 and 6, something is wrong. Detroit adjusted quickly and won the series, Calgary did same ol' since September.
2. Top two line non-existent. Other than special teams (the occasional special teams) the top two lines were gone. Iginla did score the game winner in game 3, but guess what, other than that he was completely owned my Lidstrom. Huselius was MIA, Langkow had a better regular season, Tanguay scored on a meaningless PP in game 1 and passed nice. More production from lines 1-2 would have gone a long way.
1. Poor preparation most notably on road games. This was a thing all year, but frankly, you can't win a series if you don't win on the road. What's with this team on the road? Less than a dozen wins total this year on the road but 30 at home. We were in the basement of the league but alas, we couldn't muster enough heart in the end to turn the tide and win when it mattered most--in the playoffs.
Anything you would add to the list? Stay tuned for more top five and ten reasons why the Flames......till then, golf Flames golf.