Flames’ Fire not Dead yet, but on Its Way as Bodies Continue to Drop

"Out of the playoffs again? At least I'm not in Calgary... that place is Colddddd!"

It seems like just yesterday that the Calgary Flames were THE up-and-coming team in the NHL. It was literally yesterday when the team’s ever-fading Stanley Cup hopes might have been extinguished for good when center Olli Jokinen was reported to have gone down with an injury.

Time really does go by quickly. The Flames came out of thin air to compete for the Stanley Cup in 2004 and became legitimate perennial contenders following the lockout the following year. And then slowly but surely everyone started to wish that they would disappear, like a flickering fire on its last few breaths that’s put out of its misery by being dowsed with a huge bucket of water. I mean it doesn’t count as raining on a Cup parade if the team’s marching backwards in all actuality.

Indeed, through some small miracle, general manager Darryl Sutter has harnessed the power of time travel, and has turned back the clock in re-signing forwards Alex Tanguay and Olli Jokinen. If nothing else, he could maybe find a way to market it into a means to raise enough money to get the team the new arena for which it’s apparently so desperate. It’s probably the only way to capitalize on this momentous discovery of his, seeing as both Tanguay and Jokinen each initially left Cowtown as goats. As Sutter’s motto must go: “If it’s broke, try to fix it, then break it some more in trying to fix it, then try and take back your mistake and make it less broken.”

Jokinen, whose apparent back injury on Tuesday, has become the team’s third offensive center to go down in the recent past. Both Matt Stajan and Daymond Langkow are each on the shelf indefinitely as well. If Jokinen were to be out for any significant amount of time, the team’s top center would be, wait for it, rookie Mikael Backlund. While Backlund is about as heavily touted as the next designer drug on the street, he’s also just as likely to get Flames fans overdosing on the kind of frustration only a veteran of 24 career NHL games can provide.

On a positive note, Backlund is an upgrade over fellow center Craig Conroy, the 15-year veteran who celebrated the modest milestone with a career-low 15 points in 63 games. Conroy is no doubt a valuable presence in the dressing room at this stage of his career, possessing the incredible ability to relay to youngsters tales of his first-hand experiences during the Original Six era. But his leadership aside, a team should not have a 39-year-old greybeard, whose point totals have decreased in recent years from a career-high 75 points in 2001-2002, as a top-line center. Ideally, he’d be more suited for a role as the Zamboni driver in between periods, but when you’re low on bodies, you’re low on bodies. I even hear Harvey the Hound is in the midst of trying to find an efficient way to tuck his tongue underneath a Flames jersey just in case.

Jokinen and Tanguay, who are poised to play on the team’s top line with captain Jarome Iginla, when healthy anyway, represent a short-term solution to what is quickly becoming a long-term problem for the Flames: annually trying to nail down one of the last remaining playoff spots in the Western Conference come April. It was a goal the team fell short of last season, but may very well achieve this year. But when the team chooses to rely on rapidly aging talent, Iginla included, Sutter’s resorting to cronyism to put the team over the top certainly won’t help matters much beyond that point.

Jokinen, at $3 million per year for two years, and Tanguay, at $1.7 million per year for one year after scoring a career-low 37 points last year with the Tampa Bay Lightning, are relative bargains. But when the Flames are playoff contenders instead of threats to hoist the Cup, the signings aren’t going to do them any good except earn the team two, maybe three more home games at the end of the season.

On one hand, the Flames are looking pretty good this year, with solid goaltending, a decent defensive corps, and a deep set of forwards. On the other, as Jokinen’s injury proves, depth is something that is easily compromised and won’t stand the test of time. If the Flames are doomed to relive past mistakes, another streak of seven-consecutive non-playoff seasons should not be far off.