REALITY BITES
The Flames are who we thought they were: A middling, aging team going nowhere
As much as the everdwindling diehards around here might wish it, there’s simply no pawning off a velvet Elvis as a Picasso original. Even should the velvet Elvis cost collectively as much per season ($64,208,433) as a lesser Picasso might fetch at auction. The by-now will-long-live-in-in-famy 9-0 dismemberment of the masochistic Calgary Flames in Bah-stun on Thursday evening has enraged the local citizenry, reportedly ready to storm Olympic Way brandishing pitchforks and torches. Tie an anvil to the coach and bundle his sorry hide into the Bow River! Banish all those millionaire miscreants to better teams in warmer and/or larger locales (that’ll show ’em, ungrateful louts)! Tar! Feathers! A vat of boiling oil for a round of fondue-dipping, at the very least! Well, take that knot out of your knickers, people. Sorry to have to break the rather old news to you, but this is what they are. What you see is what you get. The good. The bad. And the mostly middling. Not 9-0 bad, no. That was an aberration. The Massachusetts Massacre can be put down to merely a cumulation of factors: The end of an extended, taxing time away from home, the indisputable superiority in calibre of opponent, an already-thin lineup missing a few bodies, etc., etc., etc. It happens. A team the quality of the Chicago Blackhawks, the defending Stanley Cup champions at the time, no less, waltzed into town and were torched for seven in November of last season. Remember? But don’t for a nano-second be deluded, either. Face facts: This is a team that has been, is, and will for the foreseeable future be hanging around the NHL equator.
They will forever be dipping a game under .500, manfully pushing up to two over. 500, only to settle back at .500 again. Depending on the Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday in question.
Capable, on the day, fortified by eye-popping goaltending and veteran savvy, of upsetting a lessthan-interested group of Canucks in Vancouver. Also capable, as we have just witnessed, of being blown to bits in Beantown by a B’s team with its considerable swagger restored, all too willing to shrink away if Milan Lucic happens to so much as glance at them cross-eyed.
And, no, this isn’t rampant negativity at work. It’s realism. Or haven’t you been paying the slightest bit of attention?
This is — as if it required repeating again — the legacy left by the previous regime, and the failure of those above him to act before the quicksand became too deep.
“There’ll be no knee-jerk reaction,’’ announced president Ken King stoutly, surveying the debris field Friday. “We’re not giving a reaction to the 9-0 drubbing other than we dislike it as much as anyone else. I can also tell you there’s no smoking gun lying in the weeds anywhere.’’
Fire the coach? Fine. If you must. Brent Sutter might, by now, consider it a mercy whacking. His contract’s up at the end of the season anyway.
A quick question, though: To what end would a firing serve right now? This situation isn’t remotely similar to Ken Hitchcock given authority to nurture a pretty good young St. Louis team, or Darryl Sutter being parachuted into L.A. to lay the jackboots to a very good young Kings’ group.
This is an aging bunch that has finished 10th-place two years on the trot, and now hovers in 12th position in the West.
What coach of any pedigree, and in possession of the majority of his faculties, might actually covet the job?
Trades? Well, maybe the latest dose of reality has helped in convincing Jarome Iginla and/or Miikka Kiprusoff that perhaps they’d be better off elsewhere as the trade deadline comes into view.
Even those players with tangible market appeal are driving down their value. Winger Rene Bourque, for instance. His penchant for abominably-timed penalty brain cramps and avoidable league sanctions are graduating from mere bad habits to disturbing trends. As one wit noted: Bourque has racked up almost as many suspensions (2) as assists (3) this season.
A time of weakness, and 1-4-1 since Christmas can hardly be described as a period of strength, is hardly the moment to start phone-soliciting rival GMS. Jay Feaster may find himself trussed up in a straight-jacket, but Houdini he ain’t. Hence: Blair Jones for Brendan Mikkelson.
So as much as the ever-dwindling diehards around here might wish it, there’s simply no pawning off a velvet Elvis as a Picasso original.
Sensing the lethargy in his jaded, travel-weary troops, an exasperated Brent Sutter halted the a.m. skate Thursday at TD Garden, beseeching them in no uncertain terms that unless they find the wherewithal to ratchet up the energy level, significantly, by 7 p.m., or they were flirting with a right hiding.
So count hearing impairment as another of their many afflictions.
Presumably, further interruption won’t be necessary this morning. If so, heaven help us all.