Hockey returned to the Saddledome on Tuesday night … or did it?
A skeleton crew from Calgary were bested by a semi-NHL team from Edmonton in a game that will never rank as a classic, even by preseason terms.
Is it a case of a team with cup designs not wanting to amp things up too quickly versus a team looking to make the playoffs looking to get on the same page early? Perhaps. Always thought the process was to give home town fans a show, but that didn’t happen tonight.
But I’m a prospect viewer in the preseason, so no complaints from me.
Some thoughts …
First off; tough game to gauge. Quite often you see rookies sprinkled in with vets, and with that comes their test to see if they can keep up and contribute. In this one we had a quasi-third line as a first line, the top AHL line from last season as a second line, and then some mix and match. The blueline featured players 6 through 11 when it comes to depth. When Adam Pardy is the mail carrier when it comes to pecking order you have a tough game to watch (no offence intended).
Goaltenders:
Matt Keatley started the game, and wasn’t tested at all through nine minutes as the Flames poured it on … or poured it on in a relative sense as tonight was not NHL caliber play. Sadly he was beaten on his third shot, and it was a weak one making it 1-0 Oilers. In the second, he was beaten again on a bad bounce leaving the game down two. Not an eye popping performance for Keatley, but he did make some solid second period saves.
Leland Irving came in midway and only faced four shots through his first 15 minutes of work; hardly the recipe to impress. Made a few decent saves, and was beaten on a bang bang powerplay shot in the third for which he couldn’t be faulted. No blame on the goal, but no real saves of record either.
Forwards:
Forgive me, not a lot of stand out performances so this will be somewhat brief.
Of the “vets”, I thought Dustin Boyd had the best game, easily out shining both David Moss and a very quiet Nigel Dawes. The trio in general lacked cohesion and didn’t answer back all that well to the Oilers veteran top six forwards.
Thumbs down to the AHL line where all three of Jamie Lundmark, Chris Chucko and Kyle Greentree were somewhat invisible. Lundmark made a nice pass to Jason Jaffrey for the Flames only goal, but didn’t do enough to stand out in a game that he should have. Both Greentree and Chucko did little.
Loved the Brandon Prust / Huggy Bear scrap. Stornini landed a quick punch to the mush, but after that he did a good job of holding his own in a fight where he clearly lacked size; got a trade mark hug at the end for keep sakes. Stornini may have found his BOA dance partner for the year as he likely won’t test McGrattan.
Eric Nystrom was Eric Nystrom … nuff said.
Jaffray and Stuart had their moments, but team making moments. Garth Murray had a spirited fight early, but probably lost the bout.
For the obscure prospect pick, I thought Cam Cunning had a quietly solid night.
Defence:
The defence corps did a pretty good job overall against a much more experienced Oiler forward crew. For the most part Palin and Pelech didn’t stand out. That can either be a good sign or a bad sign depending on how you look at it.
Adam Pardy had a tough night, or at least he didn’t stand out to the degree that you’d like to see. Perhaps his massive drop in jersey number was too tough to shake.
The best pairing were the two new swedes with Staffan Kronwall and Anton Stralman playing big minutes and holding it down fairly well. Good move for both players, though Stralman didn’t do enough offensively to hold your attention.
The final piece, John Negrin was both Jeckyl and Hyde in this one, but looked good overall given his age.
In the end … move on. Nothing to see here.
