Calgary Flames: Biggest Surprise (So Far)

With the Calgary Flames’ season well and truly underway, we look into a few different views on the biggest surprise emerging from the Flames’ 2015-16 season.

Each of the Calgary Flames writers at Flame For Thought were asked to answer this simple question:

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"What has been the biggest surprise of the Flames’ season thus far?"

Here are their responses:

Logan Van Horne

Throughout the off-season, fans from everywhere were crying out for the Calgary Flames to regress and sink back down the to the depths of the Western Conference. While they have no doubt fallen it is not due to the regression many were expecting.

Incredibly poor goaltending has been a massive issue.

While many Flames have had their shooting percentage shrink, that is insignificant compared to the atrocious statistics of Jonas Hiller, Joni Ortio, and Karri Ramo. As of writing this, the Flames hold two of the bottom three spots for save percentage. Jonas Hiller‘s 0.861 is good for worst in the league while Ortio’s 0.868 is 63rd, or third last.

The stand-out is Ramo whose play against Pittsburgh and Philadelphia was good enough to boost his SV% to 0.889 which is still awful and leaves him sitting at 53rd in the league. Goals Against Average is much the same story with all three Calgary Flames goalies finishing in the bottom 10.

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The Flames goal-tending duo was around league average last year with Ortio looking like a promising prospect; now it is a complete dumpster fire that the team needs to change unless they want to finish at the bottom of the conference this season.

Ryan Darnley

The lack of form from several key defensive players – Dougie Hamilton and Kris Russell to name a pair.

Dougie was always going to struggle a little, entering a new environment and working out exactly who he can pair well with. For the coaching team to work this out with minimal disruption to the current line-up, it was always going to be a challenge. This is exactly what we’ve seen, as the defense has been shuffled around a fair bit with little time to settle or learn a partner’s game.

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Likewise, Kris Russell seems to have been impacted massively by this instability. He hasn’t always been the strongest defenseman on the Calgary Flames roster but he has terrible plus/minus statistics so early in this season, despite incredible numbers of shots blocked. Clearly, whatever he’s doing isn’t lacking in effort based on this alone.

Darcy Hume

The biggest surprise this year for the Flames has been the stellar play of Sam Bennett. Given the performance in the 2014-15 play-offs, many people thought Bennett would come into this campaign as a force.

But no one could have predicted he would be playing this well; posting 8 points in his last 6 games, it’s safe to say the line of Mikael Backlund, Michael Frolik and Bennett is paying dividends. Time will only tell how his season will go, but if he is able to keep up this torrid pace, Bennett could be at the forefront of Calder discussions.

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What do you believe to be the biggest surprise of the Calgary Flames’ season thus far? Share you views with us in the comments section below.