Pre-Season Heat(s) Up

While today was an exciting day with the launch of Hockeyindependent.com for reals (as the kids say), it wasn’t a terribly exciting day for the Calgary Flames. Sure, the team played its first pre-season game of 2009-10 on Tuesday night, but save for five players, the “Calgary Flames” in the game looked distinctly like the Abbotsford Heat. So forgive me for not rolling out a breathless post analyzing the (handful) of positives and (bagful) of negatives from the game. It was pre-season hockey at its finest, where a roster composed of mostly AHL players was bested by an Oilers team playing 2/3rds of its first line, primary backup goaltender and a number of other likely to be regular NHL players this season. Given these circumstances, its difficult to extract much meaning from the game.

However, tomorrow the New York Islanders (who apparently took a wrong turn at Albuquerque) will be the opponent and indications are that the Flames will run out a serious lineup. Not only will the smooth skating Jay Bouwmeester make his Flames debut, but a line that I’m eagerly waiting to see of  Olli Jokinen, Jarome Iginla and Mikael Backlund are going to play. Since camp opened on Sunday B. Sutter has kept this trio together consistently, which means the Flames are going to give Backlund every chance to prove he’s NHL ready. Whether or not he’s ready to make the jump to the NHL is going to become apparent  playing with the two top forwards on the team.

It will be very interesting to see how Backlund fairs because if he impresses then its going to quickly become a jumble as the Flames try to decide who to keep and who to try to sneak down through waivers to Abbotsford. With 13 forwards on one-way contracts, things could get tricky very quickly. But with so many one-way deals and D. Sutter’s stated desire to move two rookies up to the big club every season, this is the type of math that Flames fans should get comfortable with.