Erratically Pointing Fingers

George Johnson has an article in today's Herald which goes about cataloging the Flames various failings in the first couple of games in the series and then concludes the piece with this baffling cop-out "explanation":

Maybe the answer, though, isn't so complicated. Maybe it's as simple as the Detroit Red Wings being a helluva hockey team. As simple as the Flames maybe being in over their head.

Not only does that not actually explain anything, it's a baffling about face for an article entitled "Shame on Miikka's Missing Mates", that seems intent for it's majority on portioning blame onto the Flames in steaming heaps. For example, about half-way through the article, Johnson calls out the big guns,

"Jarome Iginla, get the lead out. It's your team.

Step up and take hold of it. Two shots in two games isn't near enough (Wings' D-man Mathieu Schneider had 10 on Sunday alone).

Alex Tanguay, Kristian Huselius and Daymond Langkow. Ditch that Invisibility Cloak you so obviously nicked from Harry Potter."

Look - if the Flames are truly that overmatched, it really isn't the player's fault, is it? I mean, if Detroit is truly that superior, why harp on the Jarome and company...they don't have much of chance anyhow. Right?

Let me clarify by saying I think Johnson's statement is at once valid and simultaneously ridiculous. Valid, because based on the evidence supplied so far, the Flames are obviously "in over their head". Ridiculous in that he offers this as a stand-alone explanation for what's occurred thus far in the series. That Calgary is getting beaten by a better team is little more than a self-evident observation. "Why?" is Calgary so much inferior to the Red Wings is the actual question Flames fans are asking themselves. In a series picked as a coin-flip by many observers, between two teams that have similar talent levels at every level of the roster, the Flames have so far been humiliated and out-classed by a vast margin. Yup, Detroit is the better team, clearly...but, the fact of the matter is, they shouldn't be. Not to this degree, at least. Even the most blindly devoted Red Wings fan is probably surprised by how easily Detroit has waltzed through the first two contests.

Of course, it's no secret what theory I subscribe to when it comes to explaining the Flame's misfortunes. When a roster this loaded fails this completely to execute any kind of basic, cohesive strategy, look no further than the clashing colors behind the bench. Johnson flippantly dismisses the "coach has lost the team theory" near the end his article, but I submit his claim that the Red Wings "are just better" fails to even qualify as an explanation at all.

Perhaps his final sentence is the biggest indictment of Playfair possible and lends more support to my line of thinking: Calgary's expectations of this roster have shrunk to the point of accepting, at face value, the conclusion that Red Wings are so galatically better than the Flames - that ridiculous, dry-ass-rape blow-outs are basically to be expected when we play them. Now, look at the assembled pieces of each squad - the scorers, the defence, the goaltending - and wonder how the prospects of success have sunk so low.

The conclusion seems like an obvious one to me.