National Post (National Edition)
It's all part of life inside the up-anddown North Division, where every general manager seems to have a giant, red button labelled `PANIC' on his desk that is a three-game losing streak away from being pushed.
Flames the latest Canadian contender to hit the skids
— MICHAEL TRAIKOS ON THE NHL,
Idon't know what the weather was like in Calgary on Monday. But with the Flames having played themselves out of a playoff spot in the past two weeks, the forecast seemed to be calling for falling skies.
Don't worry, it will soon pass. After all, the same storm affected Edmonton in January and then hit Vancouver earlier this month.
Meteorologists believe Montreal, which has lost four of its past five games, might be next.
It's all part of life inside the upand-down North Division, where every general manager seems to have a giant, red button labelled “PANIC” on his desk that is a three-game losing streak away from being pushed.
The truth is, the sky is falling all across the country.
That includes even you, firstplace Toronto Maple Leafs, who were forced to talk about their past playoff failures after blowing a 5-1 lead against Ottawa last week and then benched William Nylander for a seemingly all-important game against the Habs on Saturday.
Chalk it up to the pressures of playing strictly within your division in a season that has been shortened to just 56 games.
Every week is a chance to gain or lose ground, to jump to conclusions. One week, you can look like you're going to be the team that ends Canada's 28-year championship drought. The next, fans are writing off their team and wondering if they should familiarize themselves with Owen Power and the other top prospects in the 2021 NHL Entry Draft.
Are we really only five weeks into the season? It seems much, much longer.
How many coaches have already spent time on the hot seat after one bad week? How many players have seen their names in trade rumours after going a few games without a goal? How many games have already been designated as a “must-win?”
And yet, no one has fired their coach or pulled the trigger on a trade to give their team a shot in the arm. No one has been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. No one has panicked.
Not yet, at least.
It's probably because playing within the division means that you can climb into the playoffs just as easily as you can fall out of them — especially if you've got a four-game series with Ottawa on the horizon. And even if you wanted to make a trade, having to wait 14 days before any reinforcements can join the team means you're probably going to get worse before you get better.
By then, so much can change anyway.
A few weeks ago, when the Oilers were 3-6-0 and drowning near the bottom of the standings, things were seemingly so bad that there was talk about whether Connor McDavid would be asking for a trade out of Edmonton at the end of the season. Since then, they've gone 9-2-0 and own the second-best record in the division.
Last week, amidst a six-game losing streak, Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini was forced to tweet that he has “full confidence” in GM Jim Benning and head coach Travis Green after fans were calling for both to be fired. The team is 2-1-2 since then.
Now, it's Calgary's turn to panic. And for fans to take a deep breath and relax.
This has been a bad couple of weeks for the Flames. Not only did they go 0-2-1 against a Canucks team that was on the ropes, but then followed it up with two straight losses against the Oilers, getting outscored 9-2.
Heading into the first of two games against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday, head coach Geoff Ward called this a “make or break road trip” for the Flames.
A few days earlier, Matthew Tkachuk had said “this is a huge, huge moment in our season.”
Those aren't words that hockey coaches or players use lightly.
It tells you that something is wrong in Calgary, where the team has already held a players-only meeting and dealt with the unnecessary distraction of a trade request from Sam Bennett. It also tells you that this shortened season has removed any sense of patience from the equation.
In a normal year, this would be nothing more than a two-week slump — the kind of thing that all hockey teams go through and which provides a team with the sort of adversity that helps them down the road in the playoffs.
Now, with a third of the season in the books, the playoffs are suddenly in jeopardy.
It sounds like an overreaction. And it probably is.
Then again, only Ottawa has a worse record than Calgary right now. Luckily for the Flames, there's a four-game series against the Senators coming up to get them back into a playoff spot.
If not, then it's time to push the panic button and make a move.