The Playoff Push, Tanking and Scoreboard Watching Thread

[Killakirillthethrill]

Huge night for the boys !

 

[Stelmacki]

Seattle with a double minor. I have a feeling Calgary is tying this one up soon

 

[TheDizee]

2-2 Kadri scores and acts like he won the cup

 

[Blanick]

Damnit, come on Seattle you have 1 job.

 

[Stelmacki]

f*** it, let’s just run down Minnesota.

 

[ToastedRavioli]

Exact same recipe of basically every Flames game I have watched. Play subpar hockey for 50 minutes and randomly be gifted opportunities from your opponent in the last 10 and tie it. I genuinely fully believe the Flames are not even close to a top 16 team. I think anyone who has watched their games would agree. I think at some point the floor is going to fall out from under them and they will start losing some of these games when they play poorly.

 

[Blanick]

Come on Kraken, even if you can't win, at least take them all the way to the SO.

 

[TheDizee]

3-2 calgary 4:11 left

 

[Blanick]

Oh go f*** yourselves Calgary.

 

[PeoriaBlues309]

Oh go f*** yourselves Calgary.

Seattle**


Woooo they tied it back up

 

[TheDizee]

3-3 1:30 left

 

[ToastedRavioli]

Worst case scenario the Kraken have helped our tiebreaker. Obviously they were up with 6 minutes left but this was not a game we thought the Flames would lose so even the worst case scenario here isn't too bad. If Seattle can win in OT even better!

 

[Meatball]

f*** it, let’s just run down Minnesota.

 

[TheDizee]

Dunn misses on a setup and gives up breakaway to Kadri who scores

 

[oPlaiD]

I feel like I'm being punished for tuning in to this game.

 

[ToastedRavioli]

I believe that is the 5th? blown lead in the 3rd against the teams that are chasing us in the wild card race in the last week and a half. However, Calgary was expected to win this game going in. Winning in OT instead of regulation means if they lose to Dallas on Thursday and we beat the Preds in regulation we will finally officially control our own destiny.

 

[TheDizee]

 

[BlueDream]

No regulation win for Calgary is still pretty big. That helps.

Now Thursday will be a big night. We have to take care of business once more against Nashville.

Minnesota has to play Washington, Calgary plays Dallas, and Utah will be in Tampa. Tough games for all of them so we could hopefully be in a really good spot come Friday.

 

[PeoriaBlues309]

Crazy how we’d be the 6th seed in the East right now. The West is truly loaded lol.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

	Current Points	Games Remaining	Possible Points	RW	ROW	Common Games
Wild	85	10	105	32	37	vs C, vs V
Flames	79	12	103	26	31	vs U, vs W
Blues	83	9	101	28	34	vs U
Canucks	78	11	100	25	30	vs W
Utah	75	11	97	24	31	vs C, vs F

The only bright side of Calgary's win is that it wasn't RW. We have the edge on them for the first tie-breaker. If I were one of the top two seeds, I would look at the Blues and look at Calgary, and root like hell for Calgary. The Blues look like a team playing well who will be dangerous to anyone. Calgary looks like the Keystone Cops.

Canucks in action tonight.

 

[bleedblue1223]

A 7 game win streak really made catching Minnesota possible, and it's a very real possibility now. Unfortunately they have an upcoming trip with the NY area teams, and I expect them all to fall on their face and gift Minny some points after doing the same with Vancouver and Calgary.

 

[ds774622]

I agree our D is not as good, However, I must say that I don't view our defense as a weak spot at all anymore. Honestly the only major difference is Faulk instead of Petro and we could also maybe use a powerplay QB like Dunn in 2019. I can't see any pairing having as good of a defensive playoffs as 2019 Bouwmeester - Parayko did, but Fowler - Parayko is super solid too. Add Broberg and a solid third pairing and we are pretty solid on the back end. I think our true weakness is our bottom 6 compared to 2019's. The WTF line has played pretty well, but they do not hold a candle to Barbashev - Sundqvist - Steen. Maroon - Bozak - Thomas was also better than Bolduc - Sundqvist - Joseph.

My recollection of 2019 would agree with you on the third line. But the underlying stats say that the difference is negligible. 58.3% expected goals for Bolduc-Sunny-Joseph vs. 58.4% for Maroon-Bozak-Thomas. I like Bolduc's work ethic on the top line these past few games, but him playing on the third line creates a matchup nightmare.

 

[Brian39]

We don’t have the D the 2019 team had, but I like our 4 lines just as much

I think there is a legitimate argument that the current D (with Parayko) is on par or close to the 2019 group. It is constructed differently and is weaker in areas, but it is also stronger in areas.

The top 3 isn't as good. Petro, Parayko, J-Bo is just an overall better group than Parayko, Fowler, Broberg. I'm not going to make a case that Parayko, Fowler, and Broberg will give you 25+, 25, and 23 minutes as good as Petro, Parayko, and Bo did in the 2019 playoffs. And the current group doesn't have a pair that can as effectively play the 'matchup shut down' role that Bo-Parayko played. I also don't think that any of the three will provide the performance Petro did in the 2019 playoffs. If the strength/value/quality of the groups ends at the comparison of the top 3, then 2019 is absolutely better overall.

But our current top 3 does have significantly more offensive pop than the top 3 in 2019. Petro was the only guy who cracked 30 points out of that trio and the three of them combined for 26 goals and 86 points in the regular season (in 229 combined games played). Parayko, Fowler, and Broberg currently have combined for 30 goals and 89 points through 164 combined games played. I know offense is up around the league, but they've outscored the 2019 top 3 in 65 fewer games played. That's a huge gap. Dunn's 12 goals dwarf's Faulk's 4 this year, but Faulk is currently only 3 points behind Dunn's season-long total in 2019 and will likely match or eclipse Dunn's point total by the end of the year. All in all, while the top of our D group doesn't have the shut down ability the 2019 group did, they also are way more involved in the offense than the 2019 group was. The current blueline's ability to engage in the offensive zone without allowing rushes the other way is a big part of this team's identity that didn't exist at nearly the level of effectiveness in 2019.

Additionally, I think the bottom half of our current D is absolutely better than the bottom half of the 2019 group. The big 3 that year was good enough that we got away with really sheltering the bottom half of the D group, but it is kind of easy to forget just how much we relied on those 3 horses to carry the load. They were our only D who played 17+ minutes a night in the 2019 playoffs. They were also the only 3 D who played 20+ minutes a night in the regular season. We had to mix-and-match partners with Petro and Petro was the level of player that could still be a stud through that mixing and matching. But we didn't have a defined, consistent top pair that was out there together in all situations. Eddy was on the top pair some nights and a healthy scratch other nights. Petro got multiple shifts every night with someone other than his 'usual' partner and his 'usual partner wasn't consistent. And then we really limited the minutes of the 3rd pair.

Faulk (for all his warts) is a better overall player than any of Gunnar, Dunn, Eddy, and Bortz was at that stage of their careers.

Suter is more capable of soaking up minutes effectively than Gunnar, Eddy, or Bortz.

While Leddy and Tucker are both playing their off side as the 3RD, I think that both are comfortably relied on to provide more than the 12:19 Berube trusted Bortz to handle in the 17 games he was in the lineup in the playoffs and there were 9 playoff games where we had a LHD as the 3RD in that run.

I think there is a noticeable gap between the current #4-7 D men and the 2019 #4-7. There are plenty of Cup winners who have had success leaning extra-heavy on the top 4 while only using the 3rd pair to soak up enough minutes to let those guys catch their breath. Our 2019 team certainly wasn't unique for doing that and the coaching staff handled the 4-7 guys beautifully in our Cup run. But there is also a tangible advantage to having a 3rd pair that doesn't scare the hell out of the coach.

I'm not going to say that someone is wrong if they feel the 2019 D group was better than the current group, but I think that there is a real argument that the current groups is as good overall and even if you disagree, the gap isn't massive. The 2019 team was 2nd in expected goals against per 60 after Berube took over. The current team is also 2nd since Monty took over. Parayko is having a career year and the additions of Broberg/Fowler have turned this blueline into a damn good group. The style and strengths of our current D group is different than the 2019 group, but I'm not sold that it is definitively worse.

 

[Brian39]

Back to scoreboard watching, last night's outcomes weren't perfect but I'll very much take nights like last night. We snagged a dominant regulation win, Minnesota concluded a 0 point back-to-back set, and Calgary needed OT to get the 2 points that they were expected to pocket at home against the 6th worst team in the league.

We still don't control our own destiny, but we gained a regulation win in the potential tie break vs the Flames, which is pretty big. We currently hold every single potential tie break against the Flames (+2 RW, +3 ROW, +4 W, head-to-head, and +38 GF). If it comes down to a tiebreak, Calgary now needs to earn 3 more regulation wins than us in the remaining games to win the tiebreak (or 2 more RWs plus 4 more ROWs or somehow 2 more RWs, 3 more ROWs, and 5 more overall wins). That means that they did lose some of their 'games in hand' advantage last night. Entering the night, they could have jumped us if we posted identical records plus they went 2-1 in the games in hand. Both those wins would have needed to come in regulation, but 2-1 in those games in hand could have been good enough for them. After last night, if both teams post identical records across the noon-games-in-hand, Calgary now have to go 2-0-1 or 3-0 in those games in hand to jump us.

Again, not perfect. But a perfectly good night. Another step closer to Minnesota and a baby step further away from Calgary.

 

[bleedblue1223]

And even though we don't control our own destiny, the more we win, the more we put pressure on Calgary having to win all of their games in hand.