Breaking It Down: Are The Flames Good Enough Up Front?
By Dave Church
The trade deadline is coming up, but as the head honcho at FFT has summarized, it’s unlikely the Calgary Flames are going to make any major moves with all the no-trade and no-movement clauses on their roster. It’s more than likely that their re-acquisition of Mike Cammaleri is going to be the big ticket item for this year.
(Am I attempting to reverse jinx my favourite team into a great trade? Maaaaybe…)
With that in mind, I’m going to do a review of the Flames’ roster, and see if they’ve got the goods to snag that coveted playoff spot. Let’s look first at the forwards.
The statistics show a bleak offensive picture for our boys in red up front. This is a team that ranks 24th in the league in goals per game. While Jarome Iginla is no longer still the lone offensive stalwart among this crew, on the whole, it’s a group long in the tooth and short on firepower. There’s all of five guys who average more than half a point a game. Iggy leads the team in goals with 22, but it’s the oft-maligned Olli Jokinen who heads the team in points overall, with 48 in 57 games. Curtis Glencross is having a great season offensively and continuing his defensive work- he’s on pace to shatter his career highs of 24 goals and 43 points.
The Flames’ forwards do have a strong reputation for two-way play, something that’s clearly taught in the minors and re-iterated at the parent club. There are very few on the roster who are liabilities in their own end. Cammaleri would be one offender, and though one might think Alex Tanguay is, he’s made himself into a strong defensive forward with the Flames.
Bottom line, we need to see more scoring from the Flames’ forwards, while they continue being good in their own end. Glencross needs to keep going, as do Iginla and Jokinen. Veterans Tanguay and Cammaleri need to pick up their pace (even if it’s unlikely that Tangs will, given his career path). If someone from the supporting cast- one of the Lee Stempniak/Roman Horak/Mickael Backlund/Blake Comeau group, probably- hits a hot streak, that’d be nice, too. Since we’ve established this is likely the group we’re hitting the home stretch with, the improvements will have to come from within rather than outside.