Flames finish tough season with win over Ducks
Jay Feaster, channelling his inner physicist, actually bookmarked the perfect Bartlett’s quotation himself earlier this season. That being Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity:
“Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.’’
So sure, go on, re-up Olli Jokinen, the Golden Finn with the Minus Touch at, say, four years at $4.5 million a pop. Convince yourself he was, in fact, outfitted in an invisible body cast down the stretch and conveniently purge the last three, vital weeks from your memory banks.
While you’re at it, re-sign the rest of ‘em, too.
Hold tight to an aging core.
Stay the course. Ignore the evidence.
After all, it worked so astonishingly well this season.
Buy into the orchestrated shilling, the conjugal backstroking that’s been rolled out on command the last couple of days because it affords you a weird sense of false comfort. Blame injuries, curse timing, rail at the fates.
Ignore the noise of jangling alarm bells bouncing off the lining of your brain that have increased with each passing springtime. Whenever you turn on the TV over the next while, for a pick-me-up hum Monty Python’s catchy “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” watching other teams contest playoff hockey.
Bury that head in the sand and try to convince yourself everything’s going to be all right; that the immediate future is imbued with a rosy hue. Try. Try hard. But then don’t, as egghead Albert warned, expect a different result. Not in 2012-13. Or beyond.
The time for substantive shift in direction at the Scotiabank Saddledome could not be more obvious. This, undoubtedly, ranks among the most important off-seasons in recent franchise history.
After three years under Brent Sutter’s stewardship, the players, despite his most persuasive efforts, the players haven’t changed. So if Sutter is in fact to return, you change the players.
At least the ones that hold sway within the familial framework of that dressing room.
The Flames dropped the curtain on another already-forgotten season by dusting a decidedly disinterested brace of Ducks 5-2 in a Saturday matinee between a pair of postseason also-rans.
So summer starts now, prematurely, with spring scarcely having begun, a snowy chill still in the air. This summer, however, must be different. Therapeutic. Revitalizing. Finally freed from a handful of those contractual shackles that have restricted any sort of significant change, general manager Feaster has an opportunity to at least begin re-making what has become a stale, exhausted, capped-out and tapped-out franchise.
Anything else is nothing more than ongoing selfdelusion. Nothing less than courting further disaster; more collateral damage.
After three seasons of diminishing returns, and no playoffs, it’s difficult to fathom that the powers that be could con themselves into believing a mere tweak here or a slight alteration there will be anything close to enough in fixing the problems. But, well, some people can convince themselves of anything.
Where do they start? Despite the annual flurry of conjecture over his future, captain Jarome Iginla is not going anywhere, on his wishes and by corporate decree. The magnificent Miikka Kiprusoff remains the best bargaining chip to revamping but without his heroics they could play taps, not national anthems, before puck-drops here. Off-loading the undisputed MVP, who’s patched over so many cavernous cracks down through the years, would be a bold, bold move in an organization where extreme caution has been the mantra.
So who else outside the Big Two? Well, big minutes defenceman Jay Bouwmeester would have value in the right situation but he also is saddled with a big contract. Curtis Glencross? The potential is there, so uh uh. Mark Giordano? Under no circumstances. The man is future captain material.
Which doesn’t leave a lot of bartering leverage. Monies saved on outgoing unrestricted and restricted free agent is certainly a way to implement change, from outside and within. Be very selective who comes back, and on what terms.
However it’s accomplished, what cannot be disputed is that next season’s Calgary Flames must be younger, hungrier, less easily satisfied. Otherwise ...
Bringing back most of the same tired faces and set-instone attitudes? Conning yourself into thinking that somehow, magically, things will be somehow different, just because?
Einstein, by consensus a fairly bright fellow, nailed it:
The very definition of insanity.