So is this where things get interesting?
Since Mike Keenan was named head coach of the Calgary Flames, media types have been salivating in anticipation of the three ring circus that was sure to follow.
Public dressing downs, bag skates, head scratching benchings, and quotes to fill an entire notebook … stories that practically write themselves.
Yet through two weeks of training camp, and a month of regular season all remains eerily quiet on the western front. Too quiet. Something has to be coming down the tracks too quiet.
Are those dark storm clouds on the horizon?
The table is certainly set.
The Calgary Flames limped through a head scratchingly frustrating 2006-07 season last year. They were world beaters on home ice, but meek phantoms on the road. They were an offensive jugger-naught at times, but failed to put in the hard work behind their own blueline. They looked great at times, and non-existent at others. In the playoffs they lasted six games, in a series that was really over in four if you were looking closely enough.
Fast forward to June, and the move to hire Keenan. Nothing was said publicly, but the gist of the hiring suggested that the previous season’s rookie coach Jim Playfair may have lacked the stuff to lead this group. An “x and o” guy, perhaps he didn’t have the mettle to be a leader of man, a guy that can get high priced veterans to sit up and take notice. To pull that tattered rope in the same direction regardless of what ugly pit of much lied before them.
To this writer it said something else. It said that the Flames leadership group lacked the wherewithal to get things done in a competitive National Hockey League. That Darryl Sutter despite not lacing them up, WAS the team’s leadership when he stood behind the bench and that now that he uncovered the lack of fortitude it was easier to replace the skipper with a back breaker than tear up the team’s core.
Now this delicious lab experiment has finally seen that Bunsen Burner heat up to a melting point. Mike Keenan, passive as he’s been, has finally been given enough ammunition to put on his Iron Mike persona and put the boots to these guys.
An ugly home ice loss to the Sharks earlier this month was followed by the team’s most spirited play off the season. Blow up averted.
But now, having lost three straight games by a count of 4-1, the last being a game that featured zero in the try department Keenan has his table set.
The key will be the response. Colour me concerned.
“We weren’t good at all,” Jarome Iginla told reporters after the game. “I was terrible. If you look at the group, we weren’t skating. We didn’t work hard enough. The Avalanche, I’m sure they’re happy with the way they played — they got the win — but there was nobody we were going to beat with that effort.” This after two straight losses, against a team that has owned them, in a city where they haven’t had success, in an inter-divisional game that could mean the difference in the number of playoff games (if any) played this spring?
And they weren’t skating?
Corey Sarich added, “I don’t have an explanation”.
They don’t have an explanation.
Queue the angry, explosive, and quite often inappropriate coach to light these guys up. That simply isn’t good enough.
I can get my head around of not working smart, or being over aggressive. To make mistakes because of over exuberance, or to have brutal special teams due to the fact that things aren’t clicking and that they’re not getting those key bounces.
But not working hard? Not taking a modicum of pride in their inability to beat the Avalanche? That simply has to change, and the Flames have the weapon to put them on their haunches.
Mike Keenan will be back at the Saddledome today, and the media will be watching. Bag skate? Stick slamming on the ice? Maybe a lack of pucks?
It’s Keenan time, perhaps the element this team has missed for the past two winters (ok, winter and a quarter).
And it had better work.
Sutter picked core over coach last time, and that core is now locked down to a large degree on long term contracts. A roster shake up isn’t an easy as it was just four months ago.
Any the league is running out of coaching styles to shake these guys up.
