The off-season acquisitions of superstar defenceman Dougie Hamilton and speedy Czech Michael Frolik primed the Calgary Flames to have a great season. Expectations were sky-high for the franchise that was only in their third full year of a rebuild.
I like so many others called the ‘stat geeks’ who needed spreadsheets to comprehend hockey, dead wrong, about their predictions the Calgary Flames were going to regress. It seemed ridiculous.
We had two huge off-season acquisitions, not to mention the further development of Sean Monahan, and Johnny Gaudreau.
Couple that with full seasons out of play-off heroes Sam Bennett and the ‘irrelevant’ Micheal Ferland, and the Calgary Flames were sure to be better than the team they were last year right?