Blaming Miikka Kiprusoff for the Flames losses just masks the real problems.
What if those two opening losses suffered by the Calgary Flames weren't goalie Miikka Kiprusoff's fault?
I only ask that question because if you can't blame the 11 goals surrendered to the fledgling Vancouver Canucks in a home-and-home disaster this past weekend on Miikka, than the Flames have a problem much more serious than the goalie.
Why if that were true, then people might start asking questions such as: what's wrong with the defence or why aren't the forwards, an admittedly hard working bunch, effective at coming back to help their teammates?
And if those questions had merit, perhaps people might take some giant (or not so giant depending upon your point of view) leap of lack of faith and perhaps ask if these Flames really are better for the tinkering of general manager Darryl Sutter did this past offseason or the behind-the-bench machinations of coach Mike Keenan.
Now to be sure, two games are far too early to draw any long-lasting conclusions and to be fair, they did salvage a point in the loss the league gives points for. In addition, there are, after all, another 80 to go, starting with tonight's contest with the Colorado Avalanche, another team that has started the season with a legitimate 0-2 mark and doesn't look quite ready for the start of prime time or to the fact that they don't have coach Joel Quennville to blame anymore.
Like the Flames, the Avs seem to think their problems are all in goal, despite the fact that, like the Flames, their defence has been suspect and their power play weak.
Of course the Flames power play was 0-13 in the two-game series with Vancouver including 0-7 in the 5-4 loss in Game Two, but then that shouldn't matter because we all know this is the goalie's fault. Right?
Look, the first 20 games of the season are a credible measuring point not the first two. In addition, no team has ever been eliminated from the playoff race by losing the opening two games of the season to an opponent not as highly regarded in the preseason polls (unless you insist on counting the Buffalo Sabres who last season lost a home-and-home opening series to the lowly New York Islanders and missed the playoffs by (you guessed right) four points.
But here's the rub with the Flames and most every team that ended a season badly: they were supposed to be better than that, they were supposed to come out of the gate with something to prove, to convince their fans, as well as themselves that they truly are better than they showed last season when they barely made the playoffs and exited, again, after the first round.
In short, they were supposed to be ready to go from the get go this season.
They weren't.
You can blame the goaltender for some of that if you like, but from here the Flames look, for now at least, like a team that doesn't know how to play in its own zone and that reflects, at least in part, on Keenan.
One could argue that Keenan's teams have seldom known how to do that, including the New York Rangers club that won the Stanley Cup in 1994, but then that would only be one side of a three-sided argument.
One could also argue that the defence hasn't shown the needed speed and mobility to play effectively in its own end, a fact borne out by Vancouver's play. The Canucks attacked that defence with speed and when one or even two Flames defencemen stood up to that by isolating the puck carrier with some physical play, the Canucks embraced it. One could even argue the Canucks lured the Flames into their preferred style because once that first defender committed himself, the Canucks exploited his positioning by moving the puck in deeper and, often, with what appeared to be a numerical advantage.
That too seemed to be a tactical advantage the Canucks exploited at least in part because the Flames forwards weren't overly effective in coming back to help fill in when one of their mates found himself out of position because of his desire to make a big physical statement.
So early on we can say the goaltending wasn't great, but also that the system didn't work or -- if you want to take the onus off the coach -- the players weren't good enough to play it well.
All of which seemed to put an extraordinary amount of pressure on the Flames in regards to their team play.
Once they fell behind early (in Game One) to the Canucks, the Canucks ran wild. That's not to say the Flames stopped trying, it was more a case of them not adjusting. They continued to do the same things and that led to the same thing: more goals and a one-sided Vancouver win.
They were a little better at home in Game Two and one could argue that with a little luck they would have won that game well before overtime, but that discounts the fact that only one of Vancouver's five goals was truly a fortunate bounce. The other ones were scored much the same way as the previous six in Game One.
That's a problem for the Flames and one they can no longer blame on Jim Playfair or the many players Sutter --and by extension Keenan-- have moved out the door in a quest to get bigger and badder while other teams seem to be concentrating on getting quicker and faster.
The disheartening thing that comes off the Game 2 loss is that the Flames were at home and that they tried hard, and they still didn't look all that better than they did in Game One or than they did last season.
In many ways, they looked the same, a fact that did not go unnoticed by Flames captain Jarome Iginla.
"There were many good things out there, but we obviously had some breakdowns," he said. "Again."
It's that one-word, "again", that seems to accurately size up the plight of the Flames in this early going.
They keep doing the same things again and again and again. They've done them this season and last season and if you want to be overly critical, the season before that.
That can't all be the goaltender's fault; again.
Can it?