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It's experiment time for Geoff Ward and the Calgary Flames

December 4, 2019, 11:28 AM ET [28 Comments]
Todd Cordell
Calgary Flames Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
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The Calgary Flames are 2-0-0 with Geoff Ward behind the bench as head coach. That’s the good news.

The bad news? Despite those games coming against teams that have combined to win just 24 times in 56 tries, the Flames didn’t play all that well.

Calgary needed an outstanding performance from David Rittich to bail them out vs Buffalo. They followed that up by squeezing out an absolute snoozer at home to an Ottawa team that trotted out Marcus Hogberg, he of an .892 *AHL* save percentage this season, for his first career start. Not ideal.

Obviously the Flames will happily take any wins they can get at this point but clearly a lot of things still need to be figured out.

That’s probably why Ward took out the blender in practice this week, completely reshaping the forward core. If you’ve yet to come across the changes, here is what he came up with.



There’s a lot to touch on here.

I love the top unit. Matthew Tkachuk and Andrew Mangiapane have worked really well together and you’re putting them on steroids with Elias Lindholm down the middle instead of Mikael Backlund. Lindholm can handle himself just fine defensively and the offensive ceiling is much higher. I like that he’ll have extra touches and can distribute the puck in any direction, especially to these creative wingers.

The 2nd line is...interesting. It’s well documented Sean Monahan’s defensive impact is #NotGood. He’s not much of a neutral zone driver either. I don’t see any harm in shifting him over and freeing him of some responsibility. Backlund can do the heavy lifting in his own zone and Dube can aid with some of the NZ work and puck pursuit in the offensive zone. Independent of what is happening elsewhere, I’m on board with giving this a try as well.

Line three is where Ward loses me. Johnny Gaudreau is one of the most dynamic offensive players in the NHL. I know he hasn’t had his best season but I don’t see how these linemates will help him get back on track.

You want at least one quality scorer with Gaudreau. Derek Ryan doesn’t shoot – he ranks 11th among Flames forwards in attempts/60 dating back to last year – and Milan Lucic has six goals in his last 106 games. Yes, you read that correctly.

The goal for coaches is to maximize the talent on hand. This move, if Ward follows through with it in a game, does the exact opposite with the most skilled player on the team.

We’ve already seen the 4th line in action and I have no strong feelings. Their underlyings are fine. They spend a decent amount of time in the offensive zone. They can’t score, though, and their shifts are rather uneventful. I’d like to see Austin Czarnik get back in the lineup in place of Tobias Rieder.

All in all, these lines are a mixed bag; some good, some not. It is nice to see Ward shaking things up, though.

The combinations the Flames continually trotted out under Bill Peters were rather stale and simply not getting results. It makes sense to try and find some that will.

Numbers via NaturalStatTrick.com

Recent posts:

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