The Flames picked up their play from game seven of last season, which isn’t a good thing. A lacklustre effort turned into a 3-1 opening loss again the Oilers. The Fan 960 post game talked about how the Flames ran into the ‘hot goalie’ and played ‘pretty well’, I couldn’t disagree more.
I’ve maintained for some time Roloson is not a marquee goalie, but he does make stops. (He made one maybe two great stops in this game, that doesn’t really entail HOT.) All around, I was dissapointed with the effort from the Flames in general
From the get go the forwards couldn’t get anything going in the offensive zone; well I shouldn’t say that. Everything after the first 5 minutes was good ‘ol Flames hockey: boring, no offense, broken plays, bad passes, etc. The only Flames I could single out as playing average (not bad) was Iginla. Call me out on that sure, but there is plently of room to improve.
The defence had little continuity, for some reason Phaneuf logged almost 7 more minutes of ice time (just under 30) than any other player. I know he plays the PP (which was horrendous), but Regher and Hamrlik can eat up some of his ice time, he’s only what, 21?
Hope to see the whole team pick up their game. Playfair has one game under his belt and needs to improve, calling out changes faster (not saying that too many men penalty was his fault,) and using his bench a bit better (Frisen played 8 minutes and Mccarty 2.
The good news is the Flames can rebound quickly with the second portion of the home-at-home series. The home crowd will certainly work wonders for their effort, at least we hope so.
