Guesses Are Just That: Looking Back

At the beginning of the season, I came up with 20 predictions. Since we're now in the "playoffs" (whatever those are), I thought it'd be a good time to look back and see how I did.

1. Jarome Iginla will play at least 75 games this year. How effective he will be remains to be seen, but he’ll at least be on the ice.

Well, that's a good start. Iginla played in all 82 games this year, scoring 30+ goals for the 11th straight season.

2. Miikka Kiprusoff maintains his pattern of sub-par goaltending with a EVSV% around .915.

Well… nope. Kiprusoff was 12th overall (min. 20GP) in EVSV% this season, with a .928.

3. As a result, we will see Henrik Karlsson in at least 20 games this year, and he will post at least a .920 EVSV%.

Oh god awful. Karlsson only played 9 games this year-although that was due in large part to his early-December knee injury. He finished with a .910 EVSV%.

4. Jay Bouwmeester will put up 35 points this year, even though his defensive responsibility will increase by a fair margin.

Well, the second part of that was correct-Bouwmeester faced the sixth toughest competition (min 20GP) in the entire league while also being saddled with a 45% ZS. Jay only managed 29 points, however.

5. Scott Hannan will have good underlying numbers and will perform well enough that we’ll mostly forget about Robyn Regehr.

Hannan’s numbers weren’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but they were comparable to Regehr’s. The funny thing is that Regehr’s performance this year in Buffalo was routinely panned, but he actually had a better season this year by the underlyings then he did last year in Calgary.

6. Mikael Backlund will score at least 15 goals and put up at least 30 assists this year, even with his broken finger.

Sad face for Mikael. As you all know, Backlund had a couple of unfortunate injuries, resulting in a 41GP-4G-7A season. Underlyings were stellar though.

7. Brent Sutter will make it past Christmas.

Unfortunately, he did.

8. The PP will be in the top half of the league and the PK will be in the top 20.

Lofty goals here! The Flames’ PP finished 13th in the league with a 17.7% success rate. The PK was 9th in the league with a 84.3% kill rate.

9. We will not make it out of October before we get our first major “Iginla to Team X” rumour.

I’m giving myself this because I’m sure it happened.

10. The team will not lose more then 3 games in a row (Including OT/SO losses) the entire season.

Hahahaha wow. I’m a moron. In fact, they did it 4 times.

11. One more major (read: salary of >3 million) player will be traded before the deadline.

Yeah! Rene Bourque, thank you. He was sent with Patrick Holland and a second rounder for Mike Cammalleri, Kari Ramo and a fifth rounder.

12. The team will be buyers at the deadline, however misguided that might be.

Deadline day they did nothing trade-wise.

13. They will win at least 14 games against divisional opponents this year.

The Flames’ record was 15-6-3 against divisional opponents this year.

14. Roman Horak will not play more then 20 games in the NHL.

Horak played 61 games with the Flames this season, which was a nice surprise. For the most part, he didn’t suck either. Horak finished with 61GP-3G-8A.

15. The combined games played from Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond and Raitis Ivanans will total 1 more then Horak’s GP.

See above. PL3 and Ivanans played a total of 4 games combined, totalling 0 points and 10 penalty minutes. That’s some great asset and cash management, HOPS.

16. Rene Bourque will again score 50 points, but his underlying numbers will be crap. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Curtis Glencross will not score more then 15 goals at even strength but will have good underlying numbers.

Bourque had 24 points this season, which I find funny. His underlyings were crap. Glencross had 17 even strength goals but his numbers were crap too.

17. Matt Stajan will not be demoted.

This was kind of a given.

18. Chris Butler will not perform at a top-4 level, and thus we will see both Cory Sarich and Anton Babchuk play top-4 minutes for a stretch of games this season.

Absolutely wrong. Butler was the Flames’ third best defenseman by quite a wide margin this year. Sarich wasn’t awful, but wasn’t good either. Babchuk… well.

19. This will be the last season we see Kipper in a Flames uniform.

I guess we can’t rule on this yet.

20. The Flames will finish just outside of the playoffs-9th place, with 93 points.

Half point! The Flames finished 9th with 90.

I’m giving myself 7.25 out of 19 here. That’s basically the prediction equivalent of Anton Babchuk. Oi.

by Richard Hammond