The Big One!

Looking at the November schedule for the Flames, I realized that this is an unbelievably important month for them. We can call this the Northwest Division month seeing as 9/14 games are against Division opponents, here is how the shakes down:

Sat Nov.3- Minnesota
Mon Nov.5- Colorado
Thurs Nov.8- Vancouver
Sat Nov.10- Edmonton
Tues Nov.13- Minnesota
Sat Nov.17- Edmonton
Sun Nov.18- Vancouver
Tues Nov.20- Colorado
Sat Nov.24- Colorado

So early in the season but so important. As long as the Flames continue their play of recently, excepting the Detroit game the other night, they should do just fine. They play Colorado 3 times and the Flames have already lost to them twice once in OT and once in shootout, so nothing more can be given to them. When you really look at the Flames November schedule it is a little ridiculous and it really shows why the NHL is going to it's old schedule(5 games against Division opponents) next year.

The Flames need a few players to pick up their play and it is mostly the bottom half of their team. Owen Nolan has gotten off to a terrible start this year and really needs to pick it up if he is going to be anymore of an upgrade over Tony Amonte. Stephane Yelle has slowed down this year but should have another notch as the season goes on. Marcus Nilson is injured again, what a surprise and along with that his play has questions why he is still even on the Flames roster, I said that in the summer, let some old guys go and some young guys in. Matthew Lombardi should be given a shot on one of the top two lines in favor of Conroy. Lombo has 9 points compared to Conroy's 3 but Conroy still finds a way to get himself on the top 2 lines and I cant seem to figure out why that is. The defense is getting better but there still needs to be another step taken so we can cut down on the amount of goals we let in. Eriksson needs to go down to Quad Cities. He is so incredibly bad and is definitely our new Andrei Zyuzin, so bad. I wonder what Sutter thinks now about letting Giordano go?