There’re times during this game that the Flames of old fans are used to seeing briefly appeared. It says that the team is still working out the kinks with new bodies and the new season. Here’s the post game vignette.

  • I’m beginning to wonder whether or not the flames woes early on in the season is attributed to the coach’s insistence on playing favorites based on last years performance. How else can you explain Deryk Engelland playing on the second pairing on defence and failing horribly? Engelland  was routinely caught out of position and to penalties as a result. Dougie Hamilton played third pairing minutes but saw increased playing time in the third period. I’m all for using him in which the coaches should’ve done early on in the season, but the Engelland experiment is done. Can’t wait for Brodie to come back and put an end to this misery.
  • Speaking of defence the long-awaited return of Ladislav Smid is over. He returned to the lineup almost 9 months after facing injury. Is minutes on ice for limited but he faired pretty well.


  • Another management debacle seems to be over. The goalie controversy has been whittled down to two with Kari Ramo being sent to the minors. Hiller was in goal tonight and made the stops when he had to.
  • Joe Colbourne is a big body and he used it to his advantage and was rewarded with last-minute plane time where he scored his game time goal.
  • It’ll looks like Mark Giordano is coming back into for McDougall tonight including the overtime winner.
  • What we are looking for in terms of goal productions are the likes of Frolik and Bennett, who maybe putting in good 5v5 time, but still having felt about that.

The planes will now go on a 3 game road trip to the East. Hopefully they have built a little bit of momentum that they can pylons wins because he badly need it even at this point so early in the season.