What do you mean we traded Gilmour?
It’s been a long time in the making, but the Calgary Flames have finally won a playoff game. Watching the Flames not only play a game in the month of April, but emerge victorious, is both surreal and unfamiliar. In a sense, there is something nostalgic about cheering for the red and white and not feeling embarrassed about it afterwards. In another, there is a bit of disappointment in no longer justifiably being a hockey geezer making fun of his own city in the name of the good ol’ days, or not knowing who any of these new guys are. When Vancouver seems like an old team by comparison – you mean Linden is still in the NHL? – it can be safely dubbed a problem. At least there aren’t any Bures around to spoil our fun this year.
The dichotomy presented by Games 1 and 2 of the Flames-Canucks series is this: if you don’t kill penalties, you don’t win. Lest I make an inverse error by saying that killing penalties is a sure path to victory, I will only posit that it follows the contrapositive is true: if you won a game, you probably killed some penalties. Case study: tonight’s 2-1 victory. Good job, Flames.
Assigned reading this week: Ross Prusakowski, last year’s resident Calgarian sportswriter for The Gateway not named Joel Chury, will doubtless have a few words to say.
