540 Minutes
By Cait Platt
It seems the Calgary Flames are in a bit of a conundrum. The game against the Columbus Blue Jackets was a critical moment for the Flames and they fell apart. What does this mean for the next few games?
With 9 remaining games and the next one against the Colorado Avalanche tonight, the Flames haven’t really shown themselves to be a team that “wants” it. Everyone on Twitter, blogs, anywhere is talking about how every game is a “must win” and that the Flames need every point they can get if they want to make the playoffs. It’s the same broken record that plays every night, and one that played last season as well.
My question is, where was this fire in November? Why must the Flames wait until the bitter end to “turn it on”? It’s clearly not working now, and it didn’t work last year. The Flames are a banged up team, who at their best are average. Yes, okay you have guys like Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff coming in every game and wowing the opposition, that’s not going to win a season but I digress.
The remaining games not only impact the Flames, they impact other teams vying for a playoff spot. And this is where they will run into trouble. You’ve Colorado who’s trying to hold on to their 8th place spot tonight, followed by the Minnesota Wild who are in 13th place but still have a long shot of making the playoffs. After playing those two, the Flames face the third seed, the Dallas Stars, back to back no less and while they are not in danger of losing a berth, the Flames do have a problem beating them. Flames face the 9th place LA Kings after Dallas, face the 8th place Avs one more time, have back to back meetings with the 2nd place Vancouver Canucks and wrap up the season at home (thank goodness) against the Anaheim Ducks who are part of this play off race in 12th place.
Flames are going to pull out all the stops and come away winning the majority of these games? Are you telling me this with a straight face or are you giggling and I just can’t see it because this is a blog? The Flames need to “turn it on” earlier. The Flames can not play the underdog at the end of every season. Because guess what? Hockey isn’t a movie. There is no big musical montage that has Jay Bouwmeester scoring a hattrick as his wife and kids look on from the stands proudly. Okay?
There’s 540 minutes left in the season for the Flames.
My question is, what are they going to do with those 540 minutes?
Puck drops at 7pm.
Go Flames Go!