Do the Calgary Flames have what it takes to make the Stanley Cup playoffs?
Today on Daily Faceoff Live, The Athletic’s Cam Charron joined the show for another edition of The Number Crunch to discuss whether or not the Calgary Flames have what it takes in the cylinder to reach the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Calgary Flames have won two in a row, Tyler Toffoli saved the day multiple times. They’re maybe starting to get back into the playoff conversation, so two questions for you. Do they have what it takes to finish off the job and get into a playoff spot? And also, take me through a unique way you’ve laid out the Western Conference.
Cam Charron: Yeah, so the Flames are basically the epitome of one step forward two steps back. They’ve won one game, only to follow it up with two losses eight times this year. I wasn’t able to figure out how many times in comparison to other teams in the hunt but it is high. They just seem to go on these little lolls, whoever they seem to put it together, they just take that step back.
Cam Charron: For me, this is the way I’ve sort of laid out the playoff picture now. I don’t like looking at points only because points don’t count for games in hand. Points percentage doesn’t give you a very good look at how far back a team is or how many they need to win. So the way I’ve laid or out here with Winnipeg dropping some games, I’ve got Calgary at the five points back from the Jets for that playoff spot. The Jets have three up on Nashville though. That’s basically points above .500, if you win a game you pick up a point as you’ll average one point per game or you should at least if you have any hope of competing. Between now, and the end of the year, Calgary needs to get five more points above .500 than Winnipeg does, and make that six since the Jets hold the tiebreaker.
Cam Charron: The thing is, you know the Flames are one of those teams like we’ve talked about the Colorado Avalanche so many times that they can be a team that you can see going on that tear and while the Flames don’t have that firepower that the Avs’ do, the Flames don’t have a lot of holes in their roster. This is a team that should be very strong and shouldn’t be in this position. One thing that really bothers me about the Flames is their style of play, they seem to play way too slowly. They’re fifth in the NHL on shots off the rush per-60 minutes. The problem is that once they start to get into that in-zone play they try to start to play off the cycle and generate chances, and they actually don’t. They’re very bad at moving the puck inside the offensive zone once they’ve set it up.
Cam Charron: I look to a guy like Jonathan Huberdeau who is one of the best pure playmakers in the NHL, he’s had his lowest assist rate over the last five seasons. He should be one of the top players and have one of the highest assist rates in the league and there should be way more goals going in the net for the Flames. You know you can talk to their goaltending, neither Jacob Markstrom nor Dan Vladar has shown they can be the starter and carry the load for a stretch of time. We talk about Dustin Wolf in the AHL with the Calgary Wranglers and he leads the AHL in save percentage. There are a lot of questions to figure out but they’re also still so close with the fact that Winnipeg has gone on that cold streak there are not a lot of teams to jump right now it’s only them. It’s only Nashville, who I expect to fall back as they sold at the deadline, so it’s really just the Flames against themselves. They’ve got three games left against Anaheim and two left against San Jose and they really need to take advantage of those.
Frank Seravalli: So let’s talk about the Flames are there in zone play? They use their defense a lot to try and produce offense. They average 23 shot attempts from their blueline per-60 minutes, which is fourth in the league. So is that just an indication of getting low-percentage shots from distance and not doing a better job at getting the puck to the net?
Cam Charron: Right, and there are two ways of looking at it. One is, and I say it all the time but there’s no three-point line in hockey. Some teams that do take a lot of point shots or shots from the outside are very good at getting inside and creating rebounds and scoring that way. That’s something the Flames just frankly aren’t doing. They take shots but they’re not really funneling the pucks on the net and getting pucks on sticks. They get one rebound for every 4.5 shots by a defenseman and that’s a very crude way of looking at it but that’s lower than the league average. They’re basically putting the puck toward the general area of the net but not having the manpower there to do anything with it. Carolina leads the league in that department and you look at a guy like Brent Burns, who’s not necessarily shooting to score but trying and create rebounds and create chaos in front of the net. The Flames need to find a way to get pucks on the sticks of their shooters in better areas since they’re clearly not doing it with those point shots.