Ah, the dog days of summer.
NFL pre-season starts tonight, NHL teams will begin to see their players returning to their respective cities soon, and the 2024 Summer Olympics has served as a rare treat.
Christa Deguchi’s gold medal in the 57kg class of women’s judo stands out as a moment of true determination. It’s worth it to watch her match against South Korea's Huh Mi-Mi as well as her win over Sarah Leonie Cysique, in the semifinals. Both went into golden score (overtime), but the latter clearly had Christa absolutely drained by its conclusion.
Good stuff. Moments like that are what sports are all about. Discovering more about yourself than you knew prior to an event, game, or match.
With that said, this is a place for Flames discussion. Let’s keep the topic of “discovering more” though.
As the organization and their fanbase marches towards an October 9 season opener in Vancouver, this writer can’t help but believe that the Flames will be a much better team in month one compared to last season.
They went 2-6-1 last October, so that bar is fairly low—but also there are a few things to like, or dislike, if you’re hoping for an 82 game nosedive.
The Kuz
Seven goals and six assists for 13 points in his final nine games for what many considered a cap dump in the Elias Lindholm trade, Andrei Kuzmenko showed that he was on the verge of finding another gear once he had finally recovered from an illness that saw him lose over eight pounds.
There are a few trains of thought here when it comes to the 28 year old picking up where he left off.
In one hand, offence is traditionally hard to come by early in the season. Especially in Calgary. You could go back to the Iggy days of needing until late November to find his top gear, or you can just look to last year, a 30th place 2.11 goals for per game.
On the other hand, Andrei Kuzmenko is
just getting comfortable in his new role of
The Man on his new team. He gets to run the powerplay. He already has string early results to justify the hype. His coach believes that he can get more from him and his team, well, just look at Yegor.
If culture was an issue on the Flames in 2022-2023, the undrafted Kuzmenko appears to be a heavy duty palette cleanser.
All of this is to say that the Flames have a shot at being a better team than they’re expected to be next season. One more reason that might be the case?
Posping Off
Martin Pospisil served as the stirring component for two statistically dominant lines.
Zary-Kadri-Pospisil
5v5 minutes: 381.4
Goals for/against: 19/10 (65.5%)
Pospisil-Kadri-Kuzmenko
5v5 minutes: 134.7
Goals for/against: 10/6 (62.5%)
The percentages are included because they place first and second on the Flames among lines that played substantial minutes (+110) together.
You can factor in Calgary’s record with Pospisil (34-25-4) vs without 4-14-1and connect the dots that there is some smoke to that fire.
Where you find doubters is the lazy end of hockey fandom. Eight goals and 16 assists for 24 points does not equate to a good player for some.
Unfortunately for those fans, someone has to do things other than finish plays on the ice. There is no way Kadri, Zary, and Kuzmenko see their goal totals surpassing goals against to such a degree if there isn’t a forward ready to rocket out of the D-zone and take both blue lines off of every opposing turnover.
And it’s entirely possible that Martin will be hitting the scoresheet a lot more next year. His seven games at Worlds offered a glimpse of a player that can finish sequences in tight to the net on a reliable basis. The 24 year old finished the tournament with three goals and four assists for seven points.
More importantly, he did so while driving the opposition absolutely nuts.
Do you think either players take another major step forward in their development next season? If Kuzmenko is sitting in the top ten in points by December, how much do you think the Flames could get in return?
As always, thanks for reading.
Trevor Neufeld
Stats via moneypuck.com, eliteprospects.com and nhl.com.
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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