Finally!

Start me up...

After a long wait the Flames season finally starts tonight at home against the Flyers. It doesn't seem like it could have come soon enough. Between my extremely intermittent posting over the summer and general lack of interest in the preseason (mostly due to my inability to actually see what's going on there), things are about to get back to normal. Which is a relative term, as I haven't even been around for a full season yet...

The big thing for me heading into the season is the addition of Center Ice to my cable package, (meaning I don't have to fret about Sportsnet blacking out Flames games here in Ontario) so I can actually watch most of the Flames games on my big screen and not just follow the boxscores on CBS Sportsline...
Of course, I'm meeting up with some buddies tonight to finalize my keeper league team for the season, so there is an outside chance that I will miss part of the game. At least there would be, if I didn't have my trusty PVR! No commercials for me!

Roster

I've never been one to list my ideal lineups, and things aren't about to change now. I'll leave that kind of stuff to more capable hands, and instead just concentrate on who made the roster. A few weeks ago I was asked by the pensblog to do up a season preview of the Flames, which I happily agreed to. And if any of you are planning on sifting through it, just be aware that the boys over at pensblog aren't exactly known for being completely serious at all times (though it is a fun read every morning)...

Goal

#34 Miikka Kiprusoff and #31 Curtis McElhinney

Kipper will obviously get the vast majority of the starts here, and McElhinney only got the backup job because Brent Krahn is currently on the IR. Which is actually fortunate for Krahn, as I personally think that McElhinney would have beaten him for the job out of camp anyway. There are also rumours that the Flames may resign Noodles, as they may not have been significantly impressed with any of the young netminders out of camp (which I think would be a mistake due to the backlog of young talent the Flames already have). Mind you it doesn't really matter who the backup is, because he won't be playing all that much anyway...

Defence

#33 Adrian Aucoin, #8 Anders Eriksson, #21 David Hale, #3 Dion Phaneuf, #28 Robyn Regehr, #6 Cory Sarich, and #44 Rhett Warrener

Darryl Sutter appears to be taking a more defensive approach to his blueline this season (which kind of makes sense, doesn't it?), grabbing a couple of guys that are a little stronger in their own zone than the players they are replacing. It would have been awesome to have seen Giordano get a chance at a spot, but apparently Sutter thought that a non-productive veteran presence was more important. Not pleased with this decision (like pretty much all Flames fans), though I do expect the Flames to bring Gio back next year (although the idea of giving Eriksson a two year deal is looking a bit like an abatross right now... trade bait?). The defence should be pretty solid, and hopefully the new pairings (whatever they end up being) can develop some chemistry as October progresses...

Forwards

#24 Craig Conroy, #17 Eric Godard, #20 Kristian Huselius, #12 Jarome Iginla, #22 Daymond Langkow, #18 Matthew Lombardi, #25 David Moss, #26 Marcus Nilson, #11 Owen Nolan, #63 Warren Peters, #19 Wayne Primeau, #16 Mark Smith, #40 Alex Tanguay, #7 Stephane Yelle

As I said before, I'm not about to speculate on the lineups for the game tonight, but I'm pretty sure that Godard will be one of the two forwards in the press box tonight. He's become a little redundant with the addition of Warren Peters to the lineup (also a capable fighter, but also has some hockey ability) so I figure it is only a matter of time until some other team needs an enforcer and he can be traded for future considerations or an AHLer. Although he will most likely be on the gameday roster for all Wild games, since he seems to own the 'Boogeyman'...

Owen Nolan appears to be another reclamation project by Sutter (the Friesen project was essentially a failure last year, as was Amonte the year before), but Nolan has actually put up some very solid numbers in his past for a sustained period of time. If Playfair was still the head coach, Nolan would most likely be on the ice at the end of every period if he played well that game or not...

The top 6 forwards (in no particular order), should be Iggy, Juice, Langkow, Lombardi, Tanguay, and Moss. With Nolan possibly replacing Moss on right wing, and Conroy may occasionally get some top 6 time in lieu of Lombardi. Which I'm okay with, just as long as its when they are playing well and the young guys are still getting plenty of ice time...

And yes, for some reason I decided to link to the player profiles on the Flames' site as opposed to the NHL site. Don't ask me why, I just felt like it...

Front Office

Mike Keenan takes over behind the bench for the Flames this year, which should be interesting to say the least. I'm not about to get into Iron Mike's history, as you most likely know it, and if you don't then click here. At least we know that he dresses fairly conservatively and will have the balls to actually make in game changes. Of course, I just hope that those in game changes don't include changing the goalie 4 times...

Darryl Sutter is obviously still the GM, but it will be interesting to see how he gets along with Keenan. The two have been said to be very similar, so hopefully we have a repeat of the 2003-04 season (but with a better start)...

Overall I'm pretty optomistic about this season. Let's just hope that we don't have to deal with yet another crappy October to start the season...

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Seeing as I haven't had anyone comment on one of my posts since the end of July, I'm starting to think that I could write almost anything here and nobody would notice it (or at the very least, nobody would comment on it)...

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Norv Turner is killing my Chargers...

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Debating heading out to Calgary for a game next year, possibly on a weekend in March...

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I've been known to cheer for the Leafs on occasion...