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Game 5 — A Look at the Player Who Wouldn’t Sign in Calgary |
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The Flames face off against the 4-1-1 New York Rangers today at 5pm. This will be a first look at this team playing under Gerard Gallant’s system. Players on the Flames would be doing themselves a favour by not expecting the loose play that the Rangers have brought in the last few seasons. Let’s take a look at the lineup.
Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk
Coleman-Backlund-Pitlick
Lucic-Monahan-Lewis
Mangiapane-Dube-Ritchie
Hanifin-Andersson
Kylington-Tanev
Valimaki-Gudbranson
Markstrom
First line building momentum
It’s nice to see the Flames rolling out a successful first line. Elias Lindholm is currently in a five-way tie for most goals in the league despite playing one less game than others who have six goals on the season. Gaudreau is producing at 1.5pts/game and Tkachuk is doing the right things on the ice. He will start to produce more. He’s sitting on a 5.6 shooting percentage, which will eventually right it’s self. The line is currently fourth in the league in expected contribution of goals. Data courtesy of Evolving Hockey and graph courtesy of @iyer_prashanth on Twitter.
Another game for Kylington
Sutter pointed out that Fehervary’s goal was mostly on Kylington committing to the puck carrier too heavily last game. While that is true, that pairing wouldn’t have been scored on if the back checker (Lucic) had caught up to the play to handle the drop pass. Monahan could have been there too. I digress. Despite his mistake, Sutter is putting Kylington back in tonight. Good to see younger players get a bit of leash with the notoriously unforgiving Head Coach. One has to wonder when Nikita Zadorov gets back into the lineup.
A look at a former Flames asset
It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the Flames winning a trade that involved two perennial Norris candidates leaving the team. That is exactly what happened when the Flames made a swap with the Carolina Hurricanes that was:
Elias Lindholm
Noah Hanifin
for
Dougie Hamilton
Micheal Ferland
Adam Fox
Three years later, all the Hurricanes have to show for the trade is the two second round picks they got for Adam Fox. Fox’s situation reminds me all too much of the Tim Erixon situation. The Flames used their 23rd overall pick in 2009 to select the now 30 year old Swedish defenceman. He made his intentions clear that he wanted to play in New York and Calgary GM Jay Feaster sent him to New York for a very similar package — two seconds round picks (Markus Granlund and Tyler Wotherspoon) as well as Czech prospect Roman Horak.
You can say that the trade was a win anyway or that the guy just wanted to play in New York because his dad played there, but situations like these two seem pretty close to collusion of signed players. Adam Fox is certainly a harder pill to swallow than Tim Erixon, who bounced around the AHL before going back to Sweden in 2019.
In any case, here is a chance to see the Norris winner that decided not to play in Calgary. Coincidentally, the Flames drafted another New York born kid 13th overall this year in Matthew Coronato. Here’s hoping we don’t have to speculate whether the Rangers colluded or tampered to bring him over either.
Enjoy the game,
Trevor Neufeld
Follow me on Twitter @Trevor_Neufeld
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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