Look long and hard, because one of these will be real soon:

That empty spot at the end is for all our collective tears.

Side note: The number 12 has actually been retired by three of these teams—Detroit (Sid Abel), Montreal (Yvan Cournoyer, Dickie Moore) and Vancouver (Stan Smyl)—so there’s that. I trust you’ll overlook that detail, because I have no idea what number Iginla would take if he couldn’t be 12.

The latest in Iggy trade talk: Nobody’s quite sure what his list is or whether it’s real. As Harrison Mooney outlined, we’ve been hearing a string of conflicting reports about the teams on the list, whether the list is exclusive (i.e. whether Iginla’s only going to accept a trade to those teams), and whether he even made one at all. The teams dominating the discussion have been Pittsburgh (who may be out of the running after the Morrow and Murray trades, but nobody really knows), Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and maybe Vancouver and Anaheim, according to Elliotte Friedman.

As a totally biased lifelong Iginla fan—I was six at the time of the Niewendyk trade, so forgive me for not quite having a perfectly critical eye—Pittsburgh would be amazing. I can’t think of many Flames who’d have a problem with seeing Jarome on a heavily favoured Cup contender alongside Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, especially when the latter paired up so perfectly with him on the 2010 Olympic team. We all want to see him hoist the Cup, and I’d rather it be with Pittsburgh, Chicago or Boston. And who the hell wants to see him as a Canuck? Absolutely nobody.

In the end, no trade will be easy to stomach and seeing him in anything but the Flaming C will be awful. If it gives the captain a chance to win the Stanley Cup before he retires, though, I’ll root for anyone. Even the Oilers. (Fortunately, there’s no chance they’re winning that this year either.) And I’ll promise here in public, so that you hold me to it, that if Jarome Iginla wins a Stanley Cup with another team I will buy that team’s Iggy jersey too.

I’ll save the sentimental goodbyes and retrospectives and excessive lists of highlight videos for when the thing actually happens, but for now, we have a week. The NHL trade deadline is Wednesday, April 3 at 3:00 PM Eastern. Chances are high that Jarome doesn’t have much time left in Calgary, if any, so I expect all of us to watch every game until it happens. Cheer for every shift. It’s been a great 17 years.

It will be okay, you guys. Iggy the best.

Edit: And for the final word, keep your eye on Is Jarome Iginla Still A Flame? The answer is still yes, for now. Love forever.

Flames bloggers will never forget that fateful day, February 24th, 2013, as the team they cover hosted the Phoenix Coyotes, and it was innocuous enough at the time.  Raffi Torres, the league’s most infamous rapscallion, had just scored to give the ‘Yotes a 2-1 edge over the hometown heroes.  Mike Cammalleri had just been thwarted on an odd man rush by the abnormally long legs of goaltender Mike Smith.  A light melee around the net ensued, and as it subsided, Sportsnet West threw to commercial.

Upon returning from the break, it appeared.  “Charlie, there’s been a lot of talk the past couple of days about grit…”  And then there it was.  Coming into our living rooms.  Take it away, boys.

We have all truly learned something.  I, for one, couldn’t believe it:

And now neither can you.  I knew as soon as I saw it, that life as we knew it would never be the same.  FINALLY, we had some analytics that would really explain WHY the Flames, or any hockey team in general, found themselves in the predicament they were in.  The answer, it seems, always lies in grit.

I knew I needed to save the grit chart.  Future generations would have to study it.  All of a sudden, that $50 I spent on NHL Gamecenter for the year was worth it, for this endeavour alone.  After waiting the required 48 hours, I logged onto my account and re-watched this game (Didn’t hurt that this was a totally exciting game in the end, one where the Flames scored 2 goals late to tie, then win the game when it looked like Mike Smith was going to shut the door again).

As soon as it appeared on screen, I captured it.  Saved it, converted it to a JPEG, and a presiding calm within me made me smile.  The grit chart had been saved.

I also captured the video.  I had to.  Obviously the grit chart has to be contextualized, and who better to do so than Rob Kerr and Charlie Simmer?!!?! (Sorry the video quality isn’t great, I opted for quick and easy in the capture process, and I’m using limited tools.  The important thing is the chart itself and the accompanying audio, and that’s all there, so I’m happy.  Now it’s an educational tool for you to use, an important resource in hockey breakdown.

Now we have both the picture and the video.  Forever.  Let us regale in the origins of the Grit Chart.  Let us use it only for good.  Let us Never Forget.

There has been some bleak calamities following your Calgary Flames in this, a lockout shortened 2013 NHL campaign.

We can list them all out if you want. We all could use a good cry sometimes:

• Blair Jones demotion (that might just be for me)
• Mikael Backlund injury
• Kippersuck (I love Kipper, everyone knows that, it pains me to say it)
• Akim Aliu promotion on purpose
• Roman Cervenka getting exactly zero minutes every single game ever
• Blake Comeau getting Cervenka’s real ice time
• The acquisition of Brian McGrattan
• The WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED WITH ALL THIS RYAN O’REILLY BUSINESS HOLY SHIT
• Jarome Iginla maybe for realz getting traded this year

Ouch.

The biggest point of contention with this team might be, once again, that they are too good to suck, but not good enough to be good.  Indeed, the team continues to run through consistently inconsistent streaks in which they’ll win a game or two, and follow suit by losing two or three, and as a result, and coupled with the fact that the Oilers still suck, Columbus’ recent power struggles will fizzle out because Sergei Bobrovsky is their goalie, and Colorado with their new Ryan O’Reilly is still not very good, the Flames are destined to finish anywhere from 8th to 13th in the Western Conference.  And let’s face it, probably not 8th.

Given that the big sexy of the 2013 NHL Draft is the Top 5 picks (like most drafts), the Flames, who would surely get a capable player that can be a very complementary piece for years to come in the, let’s say 10th slot, it’s not that MARQUEE guy that a Jones, MacKinnon, or Barkov gets you.

Obviously you hate the idea of being bad enough to win one of those consolation prizes, but such is the inherent flaw of rewarding failure in professional sports.

The backlash from this is obvious.  Flames fans, who look two and a half hours north to Edmonton and see the Oilers in the midst of their own rebuild, with all their kids who look like they’re a lot of fun, and think “HEY, (GUFFAW), WHY DON’T WE DO THIS???”

Nevermind the fact that the Oilers are poised to make a run for their 4th, count ‘em 4th, 1st overall pick, and even though they keep drafting all these supposedly key cogs for the future, they’re 5 years into this and still have no sense of getting better.  Nevermind that the supposedly much older Flames have an average age only 0.8 years higher than that of the Oilers.  Nevermind that it’s. not. working.

The fans see their neighbours getting all these new toys, and they want it too.

It’s very understandable.  The prospect of “THE FUTURE” is always easy to buy into, even when the present is just toxic grade garbage.  They always can turn to “they’re young, they’re only getting better”.  Even if this is statistically untrue (Hello Jordan Eberle regression), it’s a romantic idea and hard to let go of.

So of course, you have to look at WHY the rebuild in The Chuck has been a colossal Failurebomb thus far.  Is it the players?  Partly.  Is it goaltending.  Most certainly!  Is it the coaches and management!

There’s a lot of excellent coverage – From Oilers fans themselves! – as to just how bad of a team Steve Tambellini and Kevin Lowe are, so I don’t need to delve into it too much.  You can just read some of it here, and here (absolutely brilliant).  Seriously, the guys at Copper And Blue always crush it.  Also, there’s this by Oil on Whyte’s Jeff Chapman, who is in many ways my Oilers blogosphere counterpart (no no, he’s a far better writer than I am, it’s just, he’s a guy that when things are at their worst for the Oilers, he manages to find the positive side of SOMETHING, much like I’ve always done for the Flames, even when BRIAN MCGRATTAN KEN KING ERIC FRANCIS BLAKE COMEAU)  Anyway, there’s a thousand of other examples, as Edmonton has been dealing with this for years, but I think you get the point.

Which brings us back south, to Cowtown.

Fans are going full ham for the Flames to shut it down, blow it, up, stop going for it, and rebuild.  Again, it’s a noble theory.  Get worse to get better (I’ll have you know Eric Francis subscribes to this theory, and he’s surely been suffering from a parasitic brain slug eating the insides of his skull since at least 1996, so there’s that)

But let’s, for the sake of argument, say that this is the right course of action.  Rebuild trumps retool.  Well, you’d want the right people on board for this, yes?  You’d want competent hockey minds, analytical, sharp, rational thinkers who are capable of building through a draft, trading the right pieces for the right complements, and knowing when to go Playa Hater Crazy on free agents.

Calgary does not currently employ any of these people.

Jay Feaster and his Eric Tillman haircut has done an admirable job of keeping the Jarome Iginla situation from going nuclear, and he’s made some decent moves from time to time – as an example, despite some humble beginnings, it’s looking like Sven Baertschi is probably going to pan out into a very good hockey player, and his picks – outside of what the hell where did that come from first round selection Mark Jankowski – in last year’s Entry Draft have definite potential.  But can you look at the course he’s been plotting and say he’s got a good sense of what it’s going to take to make this team better?

I can’t, and the only really positive thing you can say is he’s not making it worse than what Darryl Sutter left him.  No easy feat indeed, but treading water is not forward motion.

Bob Hartley is the coach, and I still can’t shake the fact that Hartley is the godson to Feaster’s son.  It’s a total bosom buddies scenario, and I’m still not convinced that this wasn’t the reason why Hartley was hired.  Hartley is not the worst coach, and there have been fleeting glimpses of a system that works with the current Flames roster, but he’s since abandoned it in favour of grit and a vague notion of being bigger because one time Trevor Lewis accidentally tripped into Joey MacDonald and no one made him bleed for it.  (It’s not that I disagree with the notion of someone making pay for Lewis being anywhere near his goalie, but to drop everything and prioritize it is ludicrous)

Hartley has a reputation for being hard on young players, and considering Sven Baertschi is poised to become a key cog going forward, you’d want to nurture his development as a pro, not kill his confidence altogether.  Again, while there were worse coaching options that could be made, this was not the right decision from a hockey standpoint.  If you’re going to rebuild through youth, don’t employ a guy that mishandles youth!

Jay Feaster is a lawyer by trade.  That’s great.  You know what lawyers do, like, for a living?  They read a shit ton of legalese and interpret it.  Which is something he, along with everyone else in the Flames front office, was supposed to do before filing the offer sheet to Ryan O’Reilly.  Remember that?  They released this statement on their website after the blunder:

“Prior to tendering the offer sheet for Ryan O’Reilly we, as a hockey operations department, examined whether there were any impediments to our successfully securing the services of the player including, but not limited to, his having played in the KHL after the start of the current NHL season.Our interpretation of the Article 13 transition rules governing restricted free agents (“RFA”), and the applicability of Article 13.23 under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement to such RFA’s was, and continues to be, different than the NHL’s current interpretation as articulated to us this morning. Moreover, throughout our discussions, the player’s representative shared our interpretation and position with respect to the non-applicability of Article 13.23.

While we were prepared to advance our position with the NHL, in light of Colorado’s having matched the offer sheet it is now an academic point. As such, we will have no further comment on the matter, the player, or the offer sheet process.”

Jay Feaster

General Manager

Translation: We probably knew we couldn’t do this, but we were willing to go through the legal challenges to fight our case.  Noble, but a stupid bluff when you’re not holding the winning cards.

This is not the way you want someone managing your hockey team.  This is Brian Burke stuff minus the bluster.  If you’re going to have someone gamble on the fortunes of your franchise, you better make sure it’s a calculated, educated risk, and Feaster and his hockey operations department have never done this.  Mark Jankowski is another example, just in case you think I’m putting this all on one big erroneous clusterfuck of an RFA offer sheet.

A rebuild is more than just having new, younger players with upside.  It’s a culture change, and if you want that in Calgary, you start from the top and work your way down.  If you want Iginla traded, you need to make sure you have the team in place to ensure you actually get a decent return on your dollar.  You need management that knows who to keep and who to trade, let walk, what have you.  This is not a reactionary process, and it’s not supposed to be walking a tight rope without a safety net.

So if this is what you want, adios Feastmode.  Goodbye Ken King (IT STARTS FROM THE TOP.  I’m not saying fire him, I’m saying he’s been promoted to oversee that all the other properties the Flames own now make money.  He’s good at that, let him go do that, and get a new President) John Weisbrod, we hardly knew ye.  Fresh blood means fresh blood everywhere.

It’s like a chessboard.  Use your Kings, Queens, Knights, and Rooks to formulate a winning strategy, THEN put the pawns in motion.

If you want a rebuild, you’re going to want a revolution first.

*a ruhee joint

My family has a long tradition of watching the Flames together, which mostly includes shouting at the TV and sometimes giving up after the second period. Much of this is due to my mother, who is the most animated hockey fan I know. I have no doubt that she would be a much better Coach’s Corner installation than Don Cherry.

I routinely have to ask her if I can tweet the awesome things she says about hockey, and finally I decided to ask her some questions about the Flames’ season so far. I trust you’ll enjoy this as much as I did.

How do the Flames look so far?

They look like they had too much Christmas cake, or pudding. They have talent but not everyone is showing up for work. If it wasn’t for Kipper, the score would be 100-2 for visitors, in each game so far.

Side note on Miikka Kiprusoff: He currently sports an ugly .859 SV%, which doesn’t inspire as much confidence in me as it does in my mother. Ryan Pike at Flames Nation noted the other day, though, that it’s really his power play SV% that’s dragging him down–right now .647, which, ugh. His SV% at evens is .885%–not good either, but I suppose you take what you can get.

If you’ll allow some #fancystats in here for a minute (don’t tell), NHL Numbers has compiled team PDO through Sunday’s games and Calgary currently sits dead last at .940. PDO regresses to .1000, and you can read more about it here. This basically means it has to get better at some point, right? Soon?

… Ugh, I think I need some of that cake too.

What do you think of Bob Hartley?

Needs to kick more butt! He needs more oomph!

What should he do?

Bob Hartley needs to kick offense butts with a steel-toed Alberta boot and yell at them to shoot the god-damn puck into the back of the net, not at the posts. He can use the same boot to kick defense butts to stop the gd puck from going into the back of the net. He then should give Miika a cookie – chocolate chip. Or maybe oatmeal raisin.

Terry Crisp’d. I like the cookie incentives, though.

How about Martin Gelinas?

GELINAAAAASSS!!! Finally we have a cute, hunky coach. Hunka hunka burning love. Ooh-hoo-hoo. Um. What was the question?

This answer is better than all other answers forever. My mom also is better than yours. I just hope you understand.

If you were on Coach’s Corner, what would you do?

I would get rid of all boomerangs and then kick Don Cherry’s butt to Timbuktu and have them put him in the dinosaur museum, or a fossil museum. Is there a dinosaur or fossil museum in Timbuktu?

Hahaha, there is in fact a museum there that might do.

Are the Oilers going to make the playoffs?

ARRRRRRRRRRGGGHHH! Yes, they will make it to the playoffs. 

Arrggghhhh indeed. My mom seems to be higher on the Oilers than many, but Edmonton currently sports a .970 PDO and, as Cam Charron noted in the above NHLN post, the team is shooting just above 5%. There’s a great deal of room for improvement, and those young guns are fun. As it stands now Edmonton has ten points, which is good for sixth place in the West–tied with Phoenix with a game in hand. Calgary, of course, is a lowly last place, two points behind the Kings. Party in the basement.

The Flames begin their three-game road trip tonight against the creaky old Red Wings at Joe Louis, nice and early at 5:30 PM. Get your popcorn–and please, hockey gods, give Jarome a goal or three!

“Is Sven okay?”

This is of course in reference to Swiss wunderkin and current future Flames legend and war hero Sven Baertschi, who is currently “week-to-week” (which I only ever remember being a timeframe for hockey injuries back on the EA Sports series in THE SUPER NINTENDO ERA) with a lower body injury.

Seeing as “week to week” is a pretty vague thing, DB’s question is pretty valid.  And the weird part is (WEIRDEST PART FORTHCOMING), in this day of instant information available at every turn, at this juncture, week to week is about as specific as it seems to be for curious fans.  Google results yielded little (read: none) in the name of clarification, so I turned to what I, and you as well, admit it, use for my most up to date source for news: the Twitter search bar.

Again, oddly, the following results gleaned very little by means of exposition, but further questions were raised when basically the search results offered up the following:

The ladies love Sven, you know.  They’re just concerned about his well being.

Keep in mind that all those tweets are timestamped for today, and not from January 26th, when there were the rumours that the Baertsch was going to ride pine against those precious Edmonton Oilers, but then didn’t, so these aren’t exactly the tweets from some in the know hockey insiders.  All those fake, sexy insiders.  Who I’m assuming all have the same sources as the Eklunds of the world anyway, so that’s something.

So that was strange.  Obviously there’s so much scheist going on here for any of this to not be suspect, and really, any spambot is essentially just algorithms and some poor, unknowing girl’s ill conceived mirror selfie, but when you see it all in one place like that, man is it eerie.

Anyway, the above is the largest image I’ve ever loaded onto The Book of Loob before, meaning it’s beaten the old record set by the Blairdometer, but given the content of the image, the Blairdometer levels are off the charts here, so obviously, it must make an appearance as well.

Shit’s high.

Get well soon, Sven, spambot overlord.

So a long way’s back, some time ago right around the time that we learned that hockey was to be roused from it’s eternal slumber, it was reported by, like people or something, that underrated Avalanche center and likely all around badass dude Ryan O’Reilly was staying in Russia, with Metallurg, which is also located somewhere on the periodic table, instead of returning to Denver to do cool things with Gabriel Landeskog.

Our hero Kent Wilson wrote a wonderfully detailed piece as to why the Flames should put in an offer sheet for the 21 year old mensch, which you can read here.

But for the record, I like to think I had the idea first:

Kent Wilson is such a biter.

Nonetheless, it was a good idea, and I imagine more than a few people had similar ideas, for similar teams.  Regardless, they can eat their own faces.

The notion and any accompanying momentum eventually simmered down, as you might expect, seeing as HOCKEY STARTED AND WE WERE ALL LIKE WHOOOOOOOAA I MISSED YOU, and then we all sat back and watched as your Calgary Flames, against all odds, logic, and all of my sternly worded emails still signed Pro Tryout Offeree Steve Begin to a contract.  To play hockey.  In the NHL.  In 2013.

Which made us all sad and reach for some Advil, but we sucked it up and moved on.

But while we were all snuggled in our various beds last night, whisked away to Slumberland (or, alternatively, up all night shooting smack. The Book of Loob does not discriminate), news came across from across a few ponds over in Russia that RO’R, as I want to call him, had been released from his Serbian ticket and will once again be traveling by dirigible back to the enchanted lands of America North.

But of course, that does not mean, as of yet, that he is a Colorado Avalanche.

Cue picture of O’Reilly looking like a hockey player:

yeah, that’s the stuff

So he’s still, for now, an RFA, which a) gets Brian Burke’s hackles up, wherever he is now, and b) is a scenario that should be revisited.

HOLD ON.  HOLD ON.  Let me finish.

Eventually.

I think this is something that Jay Feaster and John Wiesbrod and like, other people, should look into, eventually.  Because there are certainly risks.  you are probably screaming those risks at your computer screen right now, in a verbal package of expletives and just the right touch of spit.

The most immediate one being what it costs as far as compensation.  I get it, I do.  I have no idea what O’Reilly is asking for as far as money.  Friend of the blog Anthrax Jones (who writes here) speculated it’s more of a term than a money thing, suggesting RO’R wants a 5 year deal, where the historically stingy Avalanche only want to offer three (on someone who has all the potential in the world to be a career 1 or 2 C for a long, LONG time.  What an organization).  But hey, realistically, if you could ink him to a 4 year deal, he could be had for $4 million a year.  Sounds like a lot, but I think he’s worth that and more.

But if you sign him to that contract, under current CBA RFA compensation laws, it would cost the Flames a 2013 first and third round draft pick.  Hefty price to pay, but worth the risk, in my humble but right opinion.

And here’s why.  Obviously you’d prefer in most cases to not have to give up your first round pick (especially when you don’t have a second round pick either).  A first round pick is an 18 year old kid with incredible potential that you want to turn into your franchise cornerstone, ideally.  And if you score one of the top 5 to 10 picks, chances are, you have landed yourself a player that fits somewhat into that mold.

Which is great, but draft picks, especially Flames draft picks, as we’ve seen over the past two decades, are a gamble.  For every Sven Bärtschi you draft, there are two or three Greg Nemizs’ (Nemi?) that you drafted before him.  Not to mention, everyone past that 10th seeded pick is not typically in the same realm as those first few studs.

Meanwhile, you have a guy in O’Reilly who is only 21 (and I mean JUST 21), who already has a couple of seasons under his belt getting some NHL polish all up on him.  And golly, how he has looked good.  I mean, the numbers aren’t necessarily there (although 107 points over your first 3 NHL seasons ain’t not nothing, y’heard?), but he progressed tremendously last season, earning top minutes with Avs other wunderkid Gabriel Landeskog.

And brother, they did everything.  O’Reilly played in all ends of the ice, in all situations.  PP, PK, 5 on 5, in both zones, just fucking EVERYTHING man, and he was spectacular along the way.  All while playing the hardest minutes against the opposition’s best players.  (Robert Vollman at Hockey Prospectus covers how valuable Ryan is in so many different ways, and it makes me swoon so fucking hard.  Read it, because it’s so well done, and he’s not exaggerating: O’Reilly is truly as good as Vollman says he is)

Which is to say the following: at 21, you’re basically acquiring a first round pick with previous NHL experience who addresses a lot of needs on the Calgary Flames.  Draft day is fun, no question, and teams invest months over months of time scouring these players to find their gem, but here’s a guy who’s already done the legwork and made it easy to see what he’s worth.

Again, it comes with risks.  Who knows what he’s asking for as far as money and term?  Can he continue to excel playing along, hey, let’s say Sven (which, yes, he can).  The Globe and Mail article I linked to earlier reports of a potential foot injury; is there any truth to that?  WHAT ABOUT OUR DRAFT PICKS MAN???

I think a potential foot injury might actually be a blessing in disguise, assuming the Flames would be thinking about this (whether they do it or not, I think it would be atrocious if the Flames upper management DIDN’T have this on their radar, and if they don’t, we have a much bigger problem here)

Calgary, as we all know, are off to a less than auspicious start, at 0-2-0-1.  But the record is not necessarily indicative of who the team is.  Quite honestly, I think they’ve played well.  They’ve lost, but they’ve never truly been out of the game.  I thought against Vancouver last night, despite losing in the shootout, they were at times the better team.  Like, in the third and overtime, I thought the Canucks looked tired, while Calgary had some more to give.

They’re not as bad as the record says, is what I’m getting at.  With Jiri Hudler and Roman Cervenka due back in the lineup soon, and Miikka Kiprusoff hopefully shedding the skin of what was truly abysmal goalie in the first two games, the team actually has a chance to surprise a few people, get on a roll, and start moving towards good things.

Or everything could turn into an unmitigated disaster, and anyone on the team short of Harvey the Hound and Sven Bärtschi will have their head served to the fans on a platter.

The direction the team goes on while the fates decide what happens to Ryan O’Reilly can really dictate what you do regarding him.

If the Flames start going all world beaters and start putting some wins together, and maybe it looks like they can finish in, oh, 8th place, which I guess is a goal because why wouldn’t it be at this point, than that would a) be a major surprise given the dearth down the middle, and b) suggest that an upgrade in that position down the stretch might not be such a terrible idea, as anytime you can be better going into the playoffs, well it’s good times party for everyone.

That’s when you put in the offer sheet to O’Reilly’s agent, whoever he is (I hope it’s not the same guy Joffrey Lupul employs).  O’Reilly is exactly the kind of player you want on your team for a(n extended?) playoff run.  Not only that, if that lands you your first round draft pick somewhere in the range of 16-20, than chances are whoever that player ends up being is not as good as Ryan O’Reilly.

However, if the whole butterfly effect theory holds true, and instead the Flames go toilet mode, the bounces don’t go their way, Jiri Hudler becomes Jiri Who?dler, and the team finishes up in Nathan MacKinnon territory, by all means, hold off and DRAFT NATHAN MACKINNON.

It’s win – win to some extent.  You either get a player you can build around for years to come, or you can get a player you can build around for years to come who makes you better immediately.  Nothing is guaranteed; if you wait around too long, a guy like O’Reilly will be snapped up by SOMEONE before too long, and so be it, doing your due diligence on these things comes with these pratfalls.  And maybe he doesn’t sign.  Maybe Colorado matches.  But at least you try.  If you’re overachieving and are moving up, you have to try.

I know I would.

(One final thought: You could probably take every instance in this article where it says “Ryan O’Reilly” and substitute it with the words “Jamie Benn” and all the points would remain the same)

UPDATE: Re: Jamie Benn: Nevermind.

You might have forgotten (or repressed it), but Dennis Wideman is now part of the Flames blue line making a tooooon of money. Kent Wilson at Flames Nation is more optimistic about that than many of us have been, risk and all, and if he turns out to have a decent few seasons hopefully it’ll have been sort of worth it?

Jay Feaster is still the GM (drink!) but my favourite dude Martin Gelinas is now the assistant coach, and that is absolutely The Best.

Other folks that are The Best include Jarome Iginla, who’s back skating at camp after sitting out with a groin strain (precautionary measures, I’m told) and Sven Baertschi, because, of course, he’s Sven. SVEN!

Here’s a bit of what you might have forgotten about elsewhere in the Northwest:

Obviously the Minnesota Wild had the biggest offseason in the division, signing Ryan Suter and Zach Parise to insane thirteen-year, $98-million contracts, as well as adding Mikael Granlund. That’s thirteen years and over a $15-million cap hit between the two of them–RIDICULOUS, and pretty bad news bears for the rest of the division.

Vancouver extended coach Alain Vigneault’s contract and so far haven’t managed to deal Roberto Luongo. Cam Charron has a great piece at Canucks Army outlining why he might be best suited to stick around on the left coast this season, though it would be significantly funnier for him to be a Leaf. Lu apparently isn’t interested in staying in Vancouver long-term.

The Canucks are also dealing with the prolonged absence of Ryan Kesler, and have signed MORE THAN ONE hilarious former Oiler, including good old Cam Barker!

Elsewhere, the Colorado Avalanche — well, nobody cares.

Edmonton has a crop of young kids that are going to be terrifying soon, and three of them–Nugent-Hopkins, Eberle, and Hall–are listed in TSN’s top 50 players for this season, however much stock you might put in that. Fortunately, they are still a useless franchise (hat tip to Thomas Drance for that).

Training camp is on now, though, and the Flames are set to face the San Jose Sharks in their season opener at the Saddledome Sunday afternoon at 4:00 PM. The time’s been changed from 5, so cancel your afternoon plans accordingly! Hockey’s back, and we are GOING FOR IT.

Sup boys!  It’s been some time.  You’re looking well, not a day older than how you did in let’s say like 1999 or something.

Not a lot to talk about on the inaugural Young Gun Day of 2013, unless you count that whole part where there’s going to be hockey training camps starting up shortly, and apparently a schedule at some point is going to materialize through some sort of enchanted happenings…what a world we live in.

Anyway, SOME ASSORTED NEWS!

******

Prior to contrary belief, neither Roman Cervenka nor Jiri Hulder are dead. Which, for a few reasons, is good news.  First of all, funerals are expensive and a morbid burden placed upon grieving families.

But also because, like it or not, these are investments.  Investments in hockey.  Which we’re playing now, by the way.  And I don’t know if you had heard, but these investments had not been performing well in the foreign markets (but what has, really?)

Cervenka I think is particularly interesting to us as Flames fans.  Not only because his injury situation was rather bizarre, in that first he couldn’t even get on a plane, and getting on the ice was out of the question, yet here he is, off of one of them aero planes we’ve heard so much about, and also ON ICE.

But more importantly, because it was viewed as a minor coup to be the franchise west of the Atlantic to win Roman’s services, and it would have been downright unconstitutional for this new prize to have his time in Calgary lapse before ever seeing him provide a return on the Flames investment.

I mean, say what you will about giving an unknown commodity the opportunity to vie for a number one or two Center spot in the NHL with a previous 0 experience playing in it, but Cervenka is widely regarded as a talented player, and not seeing him play even one game with the Flames would have been a bitter pill to swallow.

Jiri Hudler, meanwhile, I guess is somewhat injury prone, and now he has Clint Malarchuk to mentor him in the ancient art of Bizarre Injuries.  Should be fun.

Also, here is a related picture:

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Apparently the status of Jarome Iginla’s contract is a big deal, and the local media is doing a wonderful job, as always, of painting Iggy, one of the classiest fucking dudes on the face of the planet, as a distraction to the team, which is obviously something he’d allow himself to become.

GOOD JOB GUYS!

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Okay, well everything else you basically know.  We have no idea when the schedule is going to be released, Henrik Karlsson, and only Henrik Karlsson believes he’ll be the backup to Miikka Kiprusoff this season, like it fucking matters in a 48 game schedule, Matt Stajan can’t be bought out yet, and no one thinks Calgary is particularly good.  WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR WEEKEND AND MORE, TONIGHT AT 11.

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Just would like to touch on some news relayed to us today by the incomparable Jesse Spector today:

Far be it from me to have a bias towards certain members of a certain Calgary based hockey team that I kinda FUCKING LOVE, but this struck me as ludicrous.

I don’t know who does the odds for this kind of thing, and where they glean their information from, but anytime you see Marc-Andre Fleury on a list of top odds of winning a prize for GOALTENDING, I don’t think their math adds up.

My biggest issue is, and again, forget about my bias, even though it’s totally apt to my opinion in this matter, but there are, I’d say 6 goalies I’d say that Miikka Kiprusoff has a better chance of winning the Vezina over.  Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out: Miller, Howard, Halak, Rask, Smith, and FLEURY.  Further to that, if by some long shot crazy what the fuck moment wherein Roberto Luongo does not get traded and ends up splitting the already abbreviated season’s goaltending duties with Corey Schneider, than I’d give Kipper the edge for the Vez over these two guys, too.

(Obviously guys like Lundqvist, Quick, and Rinne are going to get a lot of consideration for these awards.  Mostly Lundqvist.  I mean let’s be honest here)

It was suggested to me, probably quite correctly, that oddsmakers potentially base these odds off of the PWHA and what they consider the predicted performances of some of these goalies to be, but if that’s the case, all those writers are smoking the fancy stuff too.

For the record, Kipper comes in at 33/1 odds of winning Goaltending’s most hallowed prize, and, like you’d expect, they spelled his name wrong.  On the list I saw, it was written down as “Any Other Goalie”.

So if you’ve got 50 bucks and want a legitimate dark horse who COULD win, I’m no expert (Andy Sutton), but I think that’s a safe-ish bet for Miikka.  so long as you don’t NEED that $50 anyway.  Because Lundqvist plays for the Rangers, so they’ve probably already got his name engraved on thge Vezina for this year.

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Alright, so finally, some site and site related Loobish news for you to all digest today, which is really the reason I wanted to write this little update here tonight.

First off, in a surprising and humbling move, somehow, against all odds, more people out there in the blogosphere are relatively interested in things I have to say.  Winnipeg news empire, the SpectatorTribune.com, a plucky young production with designs on world domination, has tabbed me to be their Calgary Flames blogger, as they grow beyond the scope of a Winnipeg centric publication (it’s going to me mostly because Kent Wilson is too busy to do it, but I’m not complaining).  The site is wonderful, and run by the esteemed Melissa Martin, who thus far has been just delightful in dealing with me and my erratic scheduling issues, so I think you need to throw her a follow if you’re on the twitter machine, and also read the blog!  Even if you don’t care about Winnipeg, which obviously you don’t, because it’s Winnipeg.

And, finally, and most excitingly, SO MOSTLY JUST READ THIS PART IF YOU’RE BORED BY EVERYTHING ABOVE, I’d like to introduce you all to a new member of the Book Of Loob family.

Her name is Ruhee, she’s dandy, and you’re all going to love her.  Ruhee has a unique perspective on all matters Calgary Flames in comparison to me, as she is a displaced Calgarian toiling in Toronto, distanced from the local media and fan malaise, has an ever growing thirst for knowledge about all things #fancystats (which, if you know me, is not necessarily a trait I share), but is absolutely an unabashed Flames fan and Iggy aficionado.

She’s also very bright, evidently a strong musician, and probably just naturally good at a lot of things.  Which is sickening, and I couldn’t be more pleased to have her on board.

I’ve given her strict instructions to follow my own publishing schedule, which means, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, means she’ll be contributing to the site ONLY WHEN SHE FUCKING FEELS LIKE IT, and considering I’ll be busy spreading myself and my already limited grasp of English, knowledge, and common sense rather thin, it’ll be great for me, and more importantly, the 6 of you who read this site, to have a steadier and overall more robust voice concerning the Flaming C.

So, welcome her with the open arms you all provided for me, but do it with a good degree less hate.  Thanks guys!  See you like next week or something!

-John O’Donohue, Irish Poet, NHL Insider

Where once there was nothing, now there was hockey.  The lights flicker on, their steady hum heralding the dawn of a fresh season that will most certainly breathe new life into our once faded desires.  Mist rolls off the chilled bloom of the ice surface, untouched since it’s last sweeping.  It is a blank canvas. and in it’s disuse it could not now be more perfect.  It waits patiently, hoping above all hope to tell the story of the fabled warriors, clad in their traditional battle gear from head to bladed toe.

The solitary clack of the day’s inaugural puck ricochets off the ice, the unmistakable splintering of the ice as the first blade carves through it, these are the sounds of hockey, a pristine symphony conducted for an hour or two with every outing, foretelling and end to our winter of discontent.

Soon this empty chamber, populated now by only the grizzled conscripts of the ice running through their drills, will be permeated excitement, expectation, wonder, thrill, and the thousands of people who will flock here to express these emotions, and a robust array of even more.  It is the rehearsal to hockey’s dance, replete with nerviness, anticipation, an unexplainable fervor that is both terrifying and liberating for those awaiting to perform. And this year’s limited engagement has bred a deeper sense of curiosity than in seasons past.

But slaking that thirst for understanding will have to wait.  It is not yet time.  In the now, all that matters is that puck.  That foreboding 6 by 4, those militant orange pylons, the shrill whistles, and those clipboards, ever the debriefing for the missions to follow.

It is training camp. A diffusion of wonder, as it does every year, impregnates the charges on the ice, the scribes who tell tale of their exploits, and the masses who congregate here simply for support (most times).  As it is every year, the preseason is a rebirth; a clean slate.  The errs of yesteryear are both long forgotten and ever present on the minds of anyone with a particularly vested interest. Now, more than ever, it may be necessary to embrace that notion of departure.  After the paramount atrocitie, the stink of greed leaving us jaded and hollow, those of us who treat this game as more than just a callow pastime, need to embrace this camp as more than just the pretense to game Zero of hockey’s newest campaign.

The optics surrounding the grim doings that delayed our passion are just that – grim.  And no, we will never forget it.  How can we?  Just as the painful memories of the last lockout begin to decay, a fresh one set us off on another long journey of bitter thoughts and angry diatribe.  Those won’t just go away.  It is an unfortunate byproduct of the necessities needed to make hockey, and our prevailing love for it, a living, breathing entity, and no, IT IS NOT OKAY.

But to focus on those peripherals at this juncture, outside of leaving them as a casual reminder to those in charge that this is unacceptable and can never come to fruition again (say, for example, in 8 to 10 years), is an experiment in grievous self loathing and defeatism.  Yes, it happened, but as of now, hockey, our child, is back in our arms, and that’s all that matters now.

For hockey is hockey; the sum of it’s parts, the owners, the negotiators, the vile characters who we know exist in the background but are no longer forced to conjure in our minds, they are not hockey.

Sven Bartschi is hockey.  The rowdy fans in the Press Level sections at the Dome are hockey.  The wonderful men and women who ply us with nachos and Heroin Beer are hockey.  That wide eyed child in the third row, face to face with his once impossibly far away heroes, that kid is hockey. Lanny McDonald is definitely hockey.  Zambonis, Harvey The Hound, Bearcat Murray, Ron MacLean, all hockey.  The Calgary Flames ARE HOCKEY.

Jarome Iginla is the most hockey thing to ever happen.  Let’s never forget that.  Jarome Iginla is the reason we love hockey so much, not HRR, or Gary Bettman, or Leather Fetish Murray Edwards, or even newly minted hero Scot Beckenbaugh (I still love that guy, but regardless), these are lamentable realities that fuel what we love, but they are not Jarome Iginla.

And I think now more than ever is an important time to really let that sink in.

Welcome back hockey.  We missed you, and we are not going away.  Your rebirth is ours.