Pre-Break Victory Post-Game – Causes for Optimism

Scoring Chances

H2H Ice

Face-offs

A lot was riding on the game last night – primarily a play-off spot. With the win, the Flames retained the 8th spot over Detroit and Anaheim.

The Ducks were without their best forward in Ryan Getzlaf and the Flames managed to take advantage. Without the former Hitman causing havoc, the Flames were able to spend most of the night in the offensive zone at ES and even managed to score more than 2 goals for a change. Almost the entire club was in the black in terms of advanced stats by the end of the night and the team was actually rewarded for a dominant performance with the W.

Jarome Iginla had a rough first period, but managed to reel things in for the rest of the night. After a magnificent Kipper save on a 10-bell Duck scoring chance in the second, Iginla and Glencross hooked up for the go ahead marker on a nifty one-timer. That goal seemed to enliven the slumbering captain, because Jarome was far more active and dangerous from that point going forward. His second goal was vintage Iginla – a snipe from a rush off the wing. He finished the a far more “Iginla-like” stats line than has been usual lately. Good sign? Or flash in the pan? We’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to find out (although maybe he can keep it going for Team Canada).

For those of you who wonder why we include all the various ES stats at the top of each Post-Game thread, Jay Bouwmeester represents an interesting case-study as to why they’re useful. Starting with corsi, you’ll see that he was the only Flame skater under water in terms of possession. That’s a curious anomaly considering the club finished well above water. If you check the H2H Ice next, you can see who Bouwmeester played against by clicking on his name. Of his 16.8 ES minutes, Jay-Bo saw Perry for about half of it (8.7 minutes). That’s more than any other Flames defender, including Robyn Regehr (7.1). Bouwmeester also saw a lot of Koivu and Ryan, so we can safely say he played against the best the Ducks had to offer a lot.

Next, if you check out the face-off chart, you'll notice that Bouwmeester had the worst "zone start" of any Flames skater (2 more defensive zone face-offs than offensive zone). Overall, then, we can see that Bouwmeester's relatively poor corsi rate was probably more a reflection of his tough circumstances than a personal failing. Related: if you do the same excercise for the Langkow trio, you'll realize just how good they were yesterday. Imagine what would happen if they swapped out Kotalik for Bourque.

Anyways, it was a very strong showing for the club and another stuttering step in the right direction. The addition of the new forwards hasn't instantly cured the offensive woes, but it does seem to have the team headed in the right direction in terms of possession and out-shooting.

by Kent Wilson