IGT - Flames @ Hawks

Raskolnikov said:

I suggest a moment of silence here in honor of 3 cups and 9 years of excellence for the final 7 losses of the playoff streak, essentially our death # is now 7.

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:cringe:

well, at least we wont get up to 25 or whatever the red wings had.

Now they are talking about selling at the deadline, Bouma, Wingels, not the right ones again.

Last night are more passes from Seabrook and Keith behind skaters or in their skates and more undisciplined play of clearing up the middle of the ice.

The top line needs to be Vinnie, Schmaltz and Kane. Kane to vinnie for one timers is right on the tape, Schmaltz and Kane have the only chemistry on the team, but Q is constantly splitting them up to get other players going. Its time to have a top line and get Keith and Seabrook down to the 20 minute mark.

So... I mean, the question is... do we still care, or is the bandwagon lighter. Frankly I'd love to see what a true sell at the deadline would look like for an actual rebuild for next year instead of the constant wait till the offseason pull off some sort of big deal that trys to save the cap but keep the status quo. The problem is, they went from needing to get younger, to probably getting too young too fast, and moves at the deadline aren't really going to help that as we probably don't have much to send out except to get draft picks back.

MassHavoc said:

So... I mean, the question is... do we still care, or is the bandwagon lighter. Frankly I'd love to see what a true sell at the deadline would look like for an actual rebuild for next year instead of the constant wait till the offseason pull off some sort of big deal that trys to save the cap but keep the status quo. The problem is, they went from needing to get younger, to probably getting too young too fast, and moves at the deadline aren't really going to help that as we probably don't have much to send out except to get draft picks back.

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This team is so depressing to watch can we not make it "bandwagon" thing at least for 18 months?

If we give up another goal in the first two minutes of the game I'm not sure I can continue with this season. The players have no heart to respect, no fire, no flare...the league has passed us by, the first place I would start is the trainers. Perhaps we aren't fast enough because we aren't training right.

MassHavoc said:

So... I mean, the question is... do we still care, or is the bandwagon lighter. Frankly I'd love to see what a true sell at the deadline would look like for an actual rebuild for next year instead of the constant wait till the offseason pull off some sort of big deal that trys to save the cap but keep the status quo. The problem is, they went from needing to get younger, to probably getting too young too fast, and moves at the deadline aren't really going to help that as we probably don't have much to send out except to get draft picks back.

Click to expand...

This team is so depressing to watch can we not make it "bandwagon" thing at least for 18 months?

If we give up another goal in the first two minutes of the game I'm not sure I can continue with this season. The players have no heart to respect, no fire, no flare...the league has passed us by, the first place I would start is the trainers. Perhaps we aren't fast enough because we aren't training right.

Raskolnikov said:

This team is so depressing to watch can we not make it "bandwagon" thing at least for 18 months?

If we give up another goal in the first two minutes of the game I'm not sure I can continue with this season. The players have no heart to respect, no fire, no flare...the league has passed us by, the first place I would start is the trainers. Perhaps we aren't fast enough because we aren't training right.

Click to expand...

It's at least nice to not hear the Crow haters so much anymore... Bet this team would be a bit different without revolving door of poor backups...

MassHavoc said:

It's at least nice to not hear the Crow haters so much anymore... Bet this team would be a bit different without revolving door of poor backups...

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Disagree.

Crawford's play this year wasn't augmenting a decent bunch of skaters, and thus when he went down a duo of bad goaltenders dragged them down. Crawford was buoying a bunch of dead weight skaters to *barely* at the playoff line. When he went down the duo of bad goaltenders didn't drag the skaters down, it just was added ballast. The skaters themselves are dead weight overall.

Assuming Crawford was healthy all year, the best scenario I could see is essentially a repeat of 2016: Crawford, Kane, and a plucky rookie (Debrincat), dragged Toews, Keith, Seabrook, & Co along. The main difference is Saad is dead weight instead of Hjammer, and Crawford would have been doing the bulk of the heavy lifting with assists from Kane and the Rookie, as opposed to Kane doing the heavy lifting with Crawford and the rookie assisting.

The positive is that yes, there are fewer and fewer Crawford Bashers out there as it becomes more painfully obvious that he became a very, very, very important cog in the machine (even though you'll still run into a few). But I disagree that the team would be different. There's simply put too much dead weight on this team (the bulk of the core probably the biggest ballast) and Crawford just takes us at best to barely above the playoff line with the games he stole or could have stole. That's not that much different--it's the difference of 18 passengers on any give night vs. 19 passengers.