The Calgary Flames pushed their winning streak to four game on Tuesday night with a 3-1 final score over the hated Chicago Blackhawks.
Why were they hated? After all, the Blackhawks aren't even in the Flames’ division.
The Hawks represented so much of what was wrong about the last era of NHL hockey in Calgary. Despite being consistently one of the worst teams in the league, Chicago managed to glean out a 4-1-0 record against the Flames over the past two seasons.
It wasn’t that the Hawks had greater talent or matched perfectly in terms of skillsets – the Flames simply found ways to self-sabotage in games that they
should have won. Their winning percentage against middle-to-lower end teams tended to be lower than against perennial contenders.
Without spending too much time on sports psychology, it seemed that the Calgary roster simply appeared to lack inspiration in games against teams that were a few stars short of being a bubble team.
The Flames play next on Saturday against the Seattle Kraken, so we could spend that time speculating as to why the Flames of yesteryear had some vague superiority complex – or we could dig into some cool stats from this 4-0-0 run. Calgary is undefeated through four games and that is fully worth looking into.
The Simple Stuff
The Flames are sitting at or around the top of the league in some key categories.
-2nd in goals for per game at 4.75.
-9th in goals against per game at 2.50.
-8th in powerplay percentage with 28.6%.
-4th in hits per 60 at 26.33.
-Tied for 1st in empty net goals with three.
-Far and away the best third period team with ten goals for and two goals against. Their +8 differential in the final stanza almost doubles the second place Rangers’ +5.
Good stuff. Obviously, the 4-0-0 record is what matters most, but it’s nice to see the Flames excel beyond middling stats – even if it’s just for a week.
And it might be just for a week.
Sustainable?
It’s anyone’s guess how long the Calgary Flames can maintain this quality of play, but we have a few stats that back up that a fall from grace is on the horizon.
First of all, shooting percentage.
Ah, the Todd Cordell Special. He wasn’t wrong in pointing out that shooting percentage generally returns to the league median. Right now, the Flames lead the NHL in that stat.
If you’re noticing that the lower slot has a high amount of goals for only four games; that’s because the Flames are currently the best at getting pucks on sticks in that area.
OK, we have the stats. What can we take from this?
Infiltrators
The Flames are moving the puck well enough along the perimeter to find an open player in a position to break into the middle. Overloading the defence with puck movement appears to be the best method to beat both zone and man defence.
You’ll notice that most of the goals so far this season have been off rapid puck movement within the O-zone. While there has been much talk from Huska and Co. about leaning harder on transition opportunities (2-on-1, 1-on-1, anything generated off neutral zone turnovers,) the bread is currently being made on some wild perimeter work.
There are some caveats. For one, the Oilers are absolutely
terrible at protecting the front of their own net.
A bunch of the aforementioned low-slot goals were against a team that would have issues defending the slot from the Hershey Bears, but the Flames still beat good teams like the Flyers, Canucks, and Blackhawks during this run.
Make My Life Easier
Speaking of transition hockey, how hard would it be to record whether each goal was scored off of transition or off of a developed o-zone attack? The results would be enticing. Knowing which teams play a counter attack style would provide so much in terms of knowing what to expect. Raw stats are fun, but there is room for improvement.
I’m sure SportsLogiq keeps that stat, but they require great compensation for their beans counted.
We’re getting perilously close to 1000 words, so we’ll cut this one short. Going to have a little more fun with NHL Edge in the coming days. Fun fact: Martin Pospisil hit the highest top speed of all players in the NHL so far this season during overtime against the Canucks; 24.06 miles per hour or 38.73km per hour.
Additional News
The Flames added two scouts to their ranks. Connor Rankin had been working with the Flames already as a video/data analyst, but can now add "scout" to his resume.
Nice to see the Flames continue to build their pro scouting group.
In Summary
Are the Flames truly a surprise contender this season? Probably not, but it's hard to deny the value of a team truly enjoying their time surpassing expectations; even if it’s just for a few weeks.
Stats via NaturalStatTrick, the National Hockey League and NHL Edge.
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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