An irrelevant Flames link to start your day. Does anything whisper Canada more than this. Untouched ice, hockey, mountains, the clicking of sticks on ice and a little French for good measure.

Beautiful

Windy Arm, Yukon (via gababitibi)

Flames links after the jump

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NHL realignment by your favorite blog (0:49) was picked up, along with ESPN and the L.A. Times by Newsy. Which makes me think I should pay a whole lot more attention to my grammar.

Former Flame Theoren Fleury speaks out against child abuse (Calgary Herald)

Brendan Morrison and T.J. Brodie will be at North Hill Centre on Friday Dec 9th from 2:30 to 3:30 doing a celebrity gift wrap for Cystic Fibrois. Consider stopping by to support this worthy cause. Congratulate Bmo on his 4 point night and welcome T.J. to the big club, kid isn't going down again. (Canadian News Wire)

More links after the jump

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During Jay Feaster's now infamous 'blogger in the basement in his underwear' media scrum, he made it clear that the mandate for the team continues to be the playoffs.

You'll find the fan base a little divided on whether or not that's even a possibility or legitimate goal. To me, I feel the team's play over the course of the past 2+ seasons has more than aptly shown the team is not capable of being a contender. However, hockey operations for the Calgary Flames disagree, and so - we continue chasing what appears to be a futile dream.

With the injury to Henrik Karlsson, the backup goaltender spot opened up and Leland Irving was hailed from Abbotsford to fill that opening.

This had many a fan thinking 'it's time to see what he can do!' The reality is, he's here to fill Karlsson's role as backup, not for the club to get a look at what they have going forward. With playoffs still the goal, you can be darn sure that Miikka Kiprusoff will, at the very least, start every one of the next 3 home games and more than likely the next road game in Nashville. The next back to back on the road doesn't hit until over a week from now in Florida, and it's expected that Karlsson will be ready to go by then.

(EDIT: @NHLFlames announced Karlsson will be out for 6-8 weeks. This should allow Irving to make his first start next Thursday/Friday against either Tampa or Florida.)

Once Flames management comes to the inevitable realization that this team needs some pretty major re-tooling, then they'll call up Irving and give him a shot at some games. This current call-up was not scheduled, is not to check out Irving and is actually a negative stretch in Irving's development as he could be down in Abbotsford soaking in all kinds of minutes. Hopefully, he gains something from just being at practice with the big club.

We'll get our chance to see Irving in the spring. Until then, it's business as usual.

Links after the jump.

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Hot Coals has some Flames news in the fire pit for today.

(1) Cory Sarich has requested a trade.

As discussed by Scott above.

Dealing Sarich at this point is going to be very tough. He has not played well as of yet, only dressed for 15 of 24 games and has a 3.6 million Cap hit and on top of it a full NMC kicked in for him in the final season of his contract which might mean he is trying to cheery pick his destination.

Who wants to be Jay Feaster?

(2) Joe Piskula has been called up. (Flames.com)

27 year old defenceman. If you don't recognize this name you are not alone. He was signed as a free agent in Oct 2010 by the Heat and signed by the Flames as a free agent on July 1, 2011. He has a small bit of NHL experience with the Kings back in 2007 when he played 5 games.

(3) Blake Comeau has been looking good since acquired by the Flames. With the Islanders Comeau played 16 games and scored 0 pts and was -11. With the Flames he has played 4 games and already has 1G 1A and is +1.

Interesting fact - In 4 games in the Flaming C Comeau has 11 hits alone and been outhit by the entire Flames defense by only 14 hits.

(4) Jarome Iginla trade trade rumors are heating up. (The Hockey Writers) (Flames Nation) and an article here with some quotes from Jarome as he shrugs off the yearly rumors. (Calgary Herald)

Personally I agree with Arik's previous article. Jarome is not going anywhere.

(5) T.J. Brodie is finding his way in the NHL despite some ups and downs. (Calgary Herald) and getting a some recognition along the way (Metronews)

(6) In the absence of Mark Giordano to injury, Olli Jokinen quietly wore the 'A' on his jersey last night. The Joker has truly ascended from the butt of jokes to one of the few over age 30 players that may earn himself a new contract next year as a leader on a rebuilding team.

Remember last season's slow start? Remember how from Oct to Dec the Flames went off a cliff only to recover and post one of the best NHL records from Jan 2011 to season end? Remember how it wasn't enough because of all those early losses.

Remember how in that sea of losses in Oct-Dec the painful fact settled in after the season ended that if the Flames had posted just 3 wins out of a lot of very winnable games they could have actually finished 4th overall in the West with 100 points. A staggering point total that really illustrated just how strong their play had been for the 2011 part of the 2010-11 season. 

Is the reality that here we are, a mere 14 games in and 6-7-1 worrisome? Last season 14 games in the Flames record was 7-7-0. It is all too familiar. Although we do have a new motto for this year "Every game matters." It should have been "Every shift matters"

A little bit of a rant after the jump and your daily links eventually come up at the bottom. 

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First a few thoughts about last night's abortion of a game. Seriously...what a horrible game to watch. Even worse then usual with these two teams.

-The PP is now 2 for 34 at home. That's basically the equivlant of throwing up on a table in public. Just disgustingly terrible.

-In the history of the league, how many 40+ save shutouts have occured? Gotta be a pretty small number, huh?

-Holy God. I, like Bart Scott, cannot wait until Anton Babchuk is demoted/bought out/traded. (Edit: well, turns out he's hurt. Imagine me softly saying "yay he's not on the ice".)

-That was the best game I've ever seen from Jay Bouwmeester. +7 at ES(!) in scoring chances, +15(!!) in Corsi and a couple of really good and physical defensive plays (!!!). Those games are the reason he got so much in July of 09.

-Can we all just take a moment and laugh about how Wild fans get so worked up about everything? There was even a trending topic on twitter regarding "#refcallsincalgary". I just imagine all of them screaming "OMG BIAS!!!11!" at their screen. It was a headbutt. Shut up.

Links after the jump.

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Tonight marks the end of the Flames longest homestand of the season.  And, despite the modest two-game win streak and the slight eminence of positivity throughout Flames Nation - I'd say the only thing we really learned over the first 5 games is that the team still lacks consistency and is a major work in progress.

Some will scoff at that opinion, after all, a 3-1-1 over a 5-game stretch is pretty good.  It is.  What wasn't good was the fact that it was a different team in every game.

Oilers: Lackluster effort for the first 50 minutes before turning it on for a 6-minute stretch and hanging on to the 2-1 win.

Rangers: Flurry of goals in the 1st, followed by a return to the lackluster effort and a 3rd period/OT that saw them playing for the shootout before giving up a goal with less than 2 seconds left in OT.

Predators: A really solid effort that saw them stymied by a good goalie.

Avalanche: Excellent first period and the team jumped out to a 3-1 lead, only to coast to the finish. Miikka Kiprusoff kept this one out of reach for the Avs while the Flames were on their heels.

Blues: BORING. Snoozefest. Roman Horak scores mid-way through the 3rd only to have Kipper lose focus for half a second and, boom, back of the net.  The answer goal.  Hey, where have I seen that before? 

5 games, 5 completely different performances and not a single 60-minute effort.  Inconsistency remains the only thing consistent on this team.  All this negativity towards a team that could finish 4-1-1 in their 6 home games.  Am I asking too much, or are others seeing this as a bit of an issue as well?

Links after the jump.

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It's no secret that Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov has been struggling this season; he certainly hasn't been shy about it, talking at length with reporters about his poor play after Philly's loss to the Jets on Thursday. 

Now, the Flyers have limited the media's access to the outgoing Russian 'tender, seemingly with the belief that excessive attention from the press is a distraction to the man between the pipes. 

As Travis Hughes says in his excellent article on the topic over at Broadstreet Hockey, this assertion is ridiculous. Professional athletes are used to speaking to reporters, regardless of whether the city they played in previously was a "hockey market" or not. 

Bryzgalov had a bad game and he owned up to it in the media; he admitted that he was lacking confidence; these are things you don't often hear coming out of a pro athlete's mouth, at least publicly. Maybe the Flyers feel that Bryzgalov admitting his weaknesses to the press makes him an easy target for the opposition, I don't know, but there's still no justification for the team's decision to limit credentialed media members' access to players. It could get especially messy when you consider that the Flyers are the subject of an upcoming HBO series in the same mould as the popular 24/7 documentary featuring the Penguins and Capitals leading up to the 2011 Winter Classic. 

Maybe pressure from one of the US' biggest cable networks will change the minds of the Flyers' brass. 

Links after the jump. 

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