33 games left and the Flames need to win 20 of them to make the playoffs.

In looking at the year to this point is seems that Calgary needs to get more wins on the road if they hope to make the playoffs. The Flames have won 10 road games in 28 tries a success rate of .357. At home, the Flames are much better winning 62% of their games 13 of 21 .The total wins of 23 in 49 games is only a 40.8% success rate. Winning 20 of the last 33 is 60.6% Can it be done ?

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Has anyone noticed the strange look of the Flames defense core lately ? They are decidedly left leaning and I don't mean politically, though that would be just as troubling. Some reasons why I think its a bad idea.

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Last fall, in attempt to guess what to expect from Mikael Backlund we looked at players who were drafted in roughly the same position as he was in the years prior to his selection in 2007.10-11 Backlund guess. Studying centres drafted between positions 20 and 26 in the 5 years immediately prior to Micki's draft in 2007 gave us a sample size of 11. The average output of those players in their 21 year old season was 10 goals and 16 assists.  Backlund just about nailed that average dead on with 10 and 15. 

Close enough - so lets follow up for this year.

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Winners of the last 4 in a row - the Flames closed out the 10 game stretch since the midseason mark with a 6-1-3 record - 15 points out of 20 - a .750 clip. Can they make a serious playoff run ? A look at the schedule backwards and forwards.

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Henrik Karlsson has been sheltered somewhat by Brent Sutter, but it is paying off as he is on pace to have the best statistical season of any Flame backup since Kiprusoff arrived.

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We've hit the mid season mark and the Flames still occupy 14th spot in the West. That doesn't sound good but the 8th spot is not running away, just 6 points out of reach and 4th place only 8 points away.

8th place is looking like 93 points presently so 54 points in 41 games is neccesary.

An analysis of the schedule and indvidual report cards follow.

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The first 10 games were pretty good.

The second 10 were very bad.

The third 10 have been an indifferent set.

Suffice it to say at least 4 of the final five 10 games stretches need to be good, maybe there's room for one indifferent stretch, but it can't be the next stretch.

Schedule analysis after the jump.

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With a career total of 451 career goals and an average of approximately 0.43 goals per game, Jarome Iginla is considered a good goal scorer but not thought of as one of the best goal scorers of all time. He is under contract for two more years and there is no reason to think he will not finish that contract out. Given that he is still scoring close to his career average it is safe to assume he will have at least 525 goals at the end of 12 13. That would place him about 32nd on the all time goals list. Is that his true place ? I make the case that it is not, in fact he may be among the top 5 of all time.

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Twenty games into an 82-game schedule is 24.4 % - not exactly a quarter, but close enough. After going 6-4 in the first ten games of the season, the last ten have been a challenge. While a record of   8-11-1 only projects  a point total of 70, all is not yet lost.

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The 10 game mark is a good point to take stock, I tend to think in halves and quarters and therefore an eighth of the schedule is also a nice measure, though I always find an eighth of a pie as too small of a piece.  

To determine if the record 6 and 4  is a good predictor of things to come, we need to see if the games played so far are typcial of what to expect the rest of the way. Intuitvely, with 3 games against the Oil and one against Columbus my sense is that it is weak. I suggest we break down the schedule in to tough completion, middle level teams and cellar dwellers.

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Now that it looks like Mikael Backlund has a pretty good shot to make the team out of training camp and perhaps get some meaningful minutes; it's time to look at recent comparables and how they fared in their 21 year old NHL year.

While not a complicated analysis (sorry RO I'm a simple guy), the point of comparing Backlund to recent peers is to give a broad sense of whether he is on the road to success, or he is another prospect that might be fizzling out.

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I plugged the last 5 years goal scoring totals for the Flames top 6 forwards in to Excel and had it draw the trendline and projected in to this season . It's just for info  - I know the game is played on the ice and not in Excel; but it's interesting to look at the numbers.

First the good news.

Iginla - owing to his 50 goal campaign of a couple of years ago - the linear trend line says  he will be up 3 goals to 35 for this year.

Hagman  - from a low of 8 goals in 05-06 up to 27 goals 3 years ago, gives the line a strong slope upwards, even with a dip to 22  2 years ago - gives a projection of 31.

Bourque -  a dip in  06-07 then strong growth brings the trendline right back to the 27 he got last year.

So far, so good. Read on if you want the bad news and the not quite so bad news.

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This was a big topic at the Hockey Summit.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=331624

The players want to go - and the league sort of wants to be there, but it is a tough call.

What is everyones opinion on issue ? Does it need to be solved ?

A way to perhaps make it more palatable to NHL owners after the jump.

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Earlier this summer I did some historical comparisons for Iginla and Kiprusoff versus their recent peers, with the object of learning what to expect from them going forward. Both stacked up fairly well relative to their age in comparison to some very good players

Now it is Daymond Langkow’s turn.

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Unlike the Iginla comparison, trying to establish a predictor for Kiprusoff’s potential performance is much more difficult. The stat to measure for goalie performance is more difficult to decide. Wins are great but are as often determined by the team as the tender . Goals against average is also tough to compare as a team style can vary creating discrepancies in the number of shots allowed, harming or benefiting the goals against.

Though imperfect, save percentage is probably the best measure. It can not measure that big save effect, clutch goaltending as it were, but those stats would be hard to dig up. Not like baseball – batting average with runners in scoring position etc. Someone suggested even strength save percentage – and I agree that’s probably the metric, but I’m not going to spend the time to separate out the historical stats on that.

I put together some high level peers here for Kipper to measure against. In doing so I hope we are setting the bar high, so that we can look at the most optimistic prediction possible.  Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur, Dominik Hasek, Ed Belfour, Curtis Joseph and for a closer contemporary Marty Turco for a total of 6 guys.  Unlike the forwards the trends are far less clear in the sv pct statistics.

I started the comparison at 23, though some had played earlier – only 4 were playing at 23 with Hasek, Turco and Kipper starting later. I ignored Kipper’s San Jose stats as they were small. All of them played until 37, with the exception of Kipper and Turco who haven’t reached there yet. Brodeur is 38 this year. Kipper’s last year under contract is when he is 37, though that will only be a $1.5 m salary year.

The range of sv pct for all goalies for all seasons was – from a low of .893 for Hasek in his rookie year at 26, and Joseph in his last full season in Phoenix at 39, to the high of Hasek’s .937  at 32. Kipper’s .933 at 27 second best among all. As a group – the 6 goalies fall below .902 only once –at 39 years old, when there is only 3 providing data.

Kipper clearly beats the group in his first year in Calgary at 27 - his .933 is 2.63 % pts ahead of the average – over 3 goals every 4 games. He missed the 28 year old season due to the lockout but the Vezina year at 29 had him 1.16% ahead of the group. At 30 his .917 was again nearly a full point ahead of groups .907.

What followed then was 2 years below the average as Kipper was only.906 and .903, then last year’s .920 beat the group by 0.7 %. If he had been at the group average.913 – that would have been over 14 more goals allowed last year. So the good news is that in 4 of his 6 NHL years Mikka has had a better save percentage than a group that contains the top 4 win leaders of all time and Dominik Hasek !

The interesting part of this is the unpredictability. The graph for the average looks not much like the bell curve of the goal scorers. It looks instead like one of those crazy Tour de France hill climbs - up, down, back up again and a screaming downhill to the finish ! 7 of the top 8 seasons on average of the 6 comparables occurred after 31 years of age. Age 32 was the best at just about .920, followed by the 37 and 38 year old seasons at .916. This is pretty astounding, but Roy and Hasek both had .925 seasons at 37 and 38 respectively. The drop off is steep from 38 on, though Brodeur hasn’t had the opportunity to affect those numbers as yet.

The years of 34, 35, and 36 are important as they are the next 3 for Kipper. The group produces a .915, a .911 and a .914 at those ages – pretty consistent. Assuming Kipper continues to beat the group 2 out of three years, he has been beating the group by 1.36 % when he does,  and on the down years is under by 1.30 %. This could produce a range of .928 to .898 – a huge gap over the next 3 years. 72 games at 28 shots is 2016 shots; that range of save percentage is a 60 goal differential. Absolutely gigantic range of possibility here.  If he sticks to the middle and achieves the .915 and sees 28 shots per 60 – you are looking at a 2.38 GAA; not quite as good as last year but I’d take it.

Alot of discussion has taken place recently about the age of the Flames and whether the veterans can bounce back from down years. Intuitively , the age of 30 or just after seems to be the beginning of the decline of players. I thought I'd go in to some historical stats and compare Iginla to his peers from recent NHL seasons. Not all is equal for sure, but by comparing to 5 players - things average out pretty well and we certainly can identify some trends that can give a pretty good reading

What to expect from Iggy ?

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I see that Columbus is considering acquiring Kevin Bieksa. Filatov for Bieksa Rumour.

Is there any way that they might want to consider Cory Sarich instead ? I'd rather say Staios, but I'd think that having Scott Howson laugh in my face, might do little harm to future credibility !!

I don't know about Filatov - if they insist on being rid of him, I'd take a chance, but at this point a 2nd rounder would be more than adequate.