Mike Brophy

Veteran hockey columnist Mike Brophy writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday on Sportsnet.ca and appears regularly on Hockeycentral.

Frankly speaking, Darryl Sutter's Flames are a mess.

When the NHL trade deadline arrives March 3, there will be no GM under greater pressure to make significant changes to his team than Calgary's Darryl Sutter.

Frankly speaking, his team is a mess. It looks much more like a club that was built for pre-lockout hockey rather than being able to compete in what has now become a very highly-skilled Western Conference. Take a look at the teams competing for the conference title - Chicago, San Jose, and to a lesser degree Detroit and Vancouver - they are all built around skill.

Not so for the Flames.

With six straight losses, the Flames have spiraled out of the playoffs and now sit in ninth place in the Western Conference with a 26-19-6 record. They have scored the same number of goals they have allowed, 132, and the players that were supposed to be leading them to glory are all slumping.

Captain Jarome Iginla, the team's only legitimate star forward, has no goals in his last 10 games and just one in 14. It's an old story, but the team has not provided him with sufficient talent up front to exploit his scoring ability. And if Sutter doesn't do something to change this, the Flames could miss the playoffs.

Sutter made the decision to bring in Olli Jokinen last season and even though his impact was minimal, he elected to allow Michael Cammalleri walk as an unrestricted free agent to keep the Finn who has been awful this season. While Cammalleri has played superbly for the Montreal Canadiens, scoring 23 goals (four game-winners) and 41 points in 51 games, Jokinen has just 10 goals and 32 points in 51 outings. He has been simply dreadful at home scoring just three goals and nine points (minus-5) in 26 games.

He'd probably never admit it, but you'd have to think Sutter would love to have a do-over on that decision. Iginla and Jokinen have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. If the Flames think this duo will carry the team past the likes of the Blackhawks (Toews-Kane), Sharks (Thornton-Marleau-Heatley), Red Wings (Datsyuk-Zetterberg) or Vancouver (the Sedins), they are dreaming.

Or maybe they think the Big Three on defence will be able to shut down the opposition's lethal scorers? Hmmm, how's that been working out?

The Flames have put a lot of faith in their D, in particular Dion Phaneuf, Jay Bouwmeester and Robin Regehr, and they have not played particularly well at either end of the ice. Together the trio has combined for 11 goals, one fewer than NHL defenceman points leader Mike Green of the Washington Capitals, and 51 points. Green has 50.

Not only that, they all got snubbed by the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team.

Phaneuf was supposed to prosper under new coach Brent Sutter, but that obviously hasn't happened. After seasons of 20, 17 and 17 goals in his first three NHL seasons, Phaneuf slipped to 11 last season. He's on pace to score 13 this season.

Bouwmeester, whom the Flames acquired from the Florida Panthers, is coming off back-to-back 15-goal seasons, but with just two in 51 games, he's on pace to score only three. Life was a little different in Florida where the expectations to make the playoffs barely existed and the team played more of a run-and-gun style. Besides, somebody always has to score on a lousy team. Bouwmeester was the shooter on the power play in Florida, but that isn't the case in Calgary.

And he has not been the defensive stalwart the Flames thought they were getting. All you had to do was watch Sidney Crosby blow past him en route to scoring a goal Jan. 13 to understand why Steve Yzerman and Co. didn't have faith in his being able to stop the best players in the world in Vancouver next month.

All of this has put undue pressure on goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff, who, for my money, was the NHL's most valuable player in the early going. But Kipper can't do it on his own.

What we will see in the next few weeks is exactly how stubborn the GM is. Will he stick with this group, or will he address his team's obvious deficiencies? If he doesn't add more skill to the group up front, this could wind up being one of the most frustrating seasons in club history.