Defensive Woes Mount for Flames
Rather than give a play by play of tonight’s games I thought I’d post something that’s not only been on my mind, but an issue that will cost the Flames a 4-0 exit from the playoffs this year. That issue is defensive zone coverage.
For years the bread and butter of Calgary has been solid defensive play game in and game out. When the defense broke down Kiprusoff was in the zone to make the big save. Today, this kind of hockey escapes the Calgary Flames. Despite a so-called better team, the Flames can only do one thing, score.
So what are the defensive problems that have embarrassed the Flames repeatedly this year? causing them to drop to 8th place in the Western division? Most will blame the defense, some the goalie, but quite frankly, it’s the forwards who are causing all the problems.
Tonight, dumb turnovers and incapable defensive zone coverage, particularly on bad neutral zone turnovers and point coverage. The worst culprits? Forwards who are too lazy to bother with hard defensive work. The worst of the forwards? The highest paid players.
Iginla Completely Uninterested in Defensive Play
Playfair would reward Iginla for his terrible defensive play by giving him one shift in the overtime. Of course, the undisciplined play (they looked completely out of place in OT once again) led to a Lombardi slashing penalty with only 1:30 left in the OT period. What would happen? You play like garbage defensively you won’t get the breaks you need, luckily Kiprusoff made a beauty save with 1.5 seconds left to give the team a chance in the shoot-out.
The shoot-out would go liked this:
Huselius fancy move – X
Stempniak – X
Tanguay shot top corner – SCORE (made it look too too easy)
Doug Weight fancy move – MIIKKA POKE CHECK SAVE!
Chance to win Iginla moves down the ice slow again, you’d think the goalie would know shot, but hey you can’t stop a bullet: SCORE!
So does Iggy redeem himself with the SO winner? No. Kipper got us two points, Iggy need to learn how to play defense.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head here. Have our strong defensive forwards, past and present, (Yelle, Gelinas, Nilson, Niemenen (sp), simon even) been making up for the defensive mistakes of our scoring forwards?
There was a time when we knew that we would struggle to outscore an opponent if we got into a shooting fest, so we locked them down kept it close and ran away with games by a goal. Now we have a high % of scoring forwards we think we can just outscore the other team, a total 180 from before but it’s not working and we are making life difficult for ourselves.
Try this in the playoffs and 0-4 will be the outcome.
Yep, I couldn’t agree more James. Let’s hope they end up 5-6 and not 8th.