Regarding the Flames... honestly buy-in and work ethic and good coaching and team chemistry is a powerful combination of drugs.
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No, it is in the NHL. In other major sports leagues teams with the best, and highest touted, and highest paid athletes usually win. They are usually better.
In Baseball, in basketball, in football its far less probable that a mediocre team is seen consistently beating better teams on paper. In the NHL it happens every season. It happens every night, it happens all the time.
The problem, and I've said this often, is NHL games are just not as seriously competed as the games of most Pro sports. Regular season hockey games are largely random events, and impossible to call because its quite accepted for one or the other team to just not show up. In games I watch I don't know that theres even 25% of the time where I see both clubs competing hard in any one game.
To me its an absolute fail of the NHL product and which keeps it from being taken seriously in the US.
In the US if they'r seeing the top team in a pro sport play a far lesser team they're not expecting, or thinking its anything great if the top team loses ALL their games against an also ran team. For instance like Nashville/Calgary matchup. A US fan is going to consider that a joke every time it happens. They're going to deduce that the "good" team really isn't any good. But the problem is that casual fans will quickly deduce that there are few "good" teams in the NHL or teams worth watching and following. Teams that deliver a good game consistently. So they just consider it dreck and stop watching in time.
Americans tend to like to watch a good team and expect them to be a good team any time they turn on the channel. I don't blame them and I feel the same way. The NHL, as a league disappoints most of the time in this regard.
Its why I would never get Center Ice or immerse anymore than I do. The NHL product and standard of play just isn't worth it. I'm not going to spend countless hours of my life watching clubs usually half ass it out there.