Entry Wound

Well. I started this site over a week ago, and promptly wrote absolutely nothing in it. Little embarrassing, that.

This site is my attempt at writing about a Western Conference team in the NHL; as you may have derived from your surroundings, I chose the Calgary Flames.

My reasons for doing so were twofold, although one reason is admittedly a bit less reasonable now (see if you can guess which!).

First, the trades to Toronto that sent Sjostrom, Aulie, and Dion Phaneuf to the Leafs in return for Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers, Ian White, and most importantly, Matt Stajan, who was my favorite player at the time. Although I am a practical man - while I may have favored Stajan, White was the part of the trade that seemed to be most valuable to the Flames.

Not to mention that Stajan's place in my heart was taken rather disconcertingly quickly by Tyler Bozak and Fredrik Sjostrom, who have played, combined less than a full season of games where I've actually been watching them. Moving on.

Secondly, and this is the one that is rather likely to be false now, the Flames seemed to be a team that would likely make the playoffs and thus give me something to talk about at length in the upcoming lean months. It's a long time until the draft, you see, and there's only so much recycling of hockey news I can do about the Leafs.

Alas, the Flames seem likely to miss the playoffs this year, although they're certainly not out of it. We'll see how they'll manage, though even if the Flames were to make the playoffs, they're either going to end up against the Sharks or the Blackhawks.

While the Sharks may have a bit of a poor reputation when it comes to playoff performance, and the Blackhawks are young, they are both teams that are very dangerous when playing well and from what I've seen, Calgary's success on the postseason would depend almost entirely on consistently spectacular performances from Miikka Kiprusoff.

Not to say he's not capable to doing so - it's just an awful lot of pressure to throw onto a single player. Still, Calgary would hardly be the first eighth seed to go far in the playoffs, so it's not that implausible.

At the moment, though, all I can do is hope. And learn, I suppose, about a part of the NHL I'm shamefully long neglected to pay proper attention to.