Burn it all down: How the Flames have fallen apart
December 4, 2025
Burn it all down: How the Flames have fallen apart
9 comments
My take is that the 2024-25 Calgary Flames were playing in an unsustainable way. For example, they were getting a lot of timely goals leading to a disproportionate number of third period comebacks that resulted in winning games or forcing overtime when they generally shouldn’t. They also dominated weaker competition going 22-2-4 (0.857) against the bottom 10 teams in the league; and for reference, that made their record 19-25-10 (0.444) against teams that weren’t in the bottom 10 of the league.
The Flames didn’t do anything to improve in the offseason, their puck luck reversed, and every team below them got better.
IMO matches the eye test – we are an already bad team that is also getting really unlucky this year (which seems like a good thing, for draft purposes!)
The Flames unfortunately have made most expected goals models look bad for years.
Allowing 35-40 shots every single game catches up with you.
We aren’t getting any help scoring either.
Our systems are awful and they should dump a lot of the coaching staff on top of a rebuild. It’ll never happen though.
A top 3 pick will go a long way.
Good read. Thanks for sharing.
Possible takeaway that Huska and the coaching staff are doing a fine job from a systems / structure perspective. Like, players are generally in a position to compete.
The measurement of puck luck is kinda misleading IMO.
Actual GF vs xGF normalizing assumes that we have average shooting talent.
Would you say that McDavid’s shooting % of 14% is lucky? Nope.
The flames are lacking talent. Plain and simple.
Jesus boys it’s not all that hard to figure out. We only saw it coming years away and talked about it non stop. We are right where we all expected to be at this point.
Last year the Flames got off to a hot start and Huska “managed” the rest of the season more or less to perfection (intentionally lose games against top teams, play to win versus bottom teams). Lots of puck luck as well.
9 comments
My take is that the 2024-25 Calgary Flames were playing in an unsustainable way. For example, they were getting a lot of timely goals leading to a disproportionate number of third period comebacks that resulted in winning games or forcing overtime when they generally shouldn’t. They also dominated weaker competition going 22-2-4 (0.857) against the bottom 10 teams in the league; and for reference, that made their record 19-25-10 (0.444) against teams that weren’t in the bottom 10 of the league.
The Flames didn’t do anything to improve in the offseason, their puck luck reversed, and every team below them got better.
IMO matches the eye test – we are an already bad team that is also getting really unlucky this year (which seems like a good thing, for draft purposes!)
The Flames unfortunately have made most expected goals models look bad for years.
Allowing 35-40 shots every single game catches up with you.
We aren’t getting any help scoring either.
Our systems are awful and they should dump a lot of the coaching staff on top of a rebuild. It’ll never happen though.
A top 3 pick will go a long way.
Good read. Thanks for sharing.
Possible takeaway that Huska and the coaching staff are doing a fine job from a systems / structure perspective. Like, players are generally in a position to compete.
The measurement of puck luck is kinda misleading IMO.
Actual GF vs xGF normalizing assumes that we have average shooting talent.
Would you say that McDavid’s shooting % of 14% is lucky? Nope.
The flames are lacking talent. Plain and simple.
Jesus boys it’s not all that hard to figure out. We only saw it coming years away and talked about it non stop. We are right where we all expected to be at this point.
Last year the Flames got off to a hot start and Huska “managed” the rest of the season more or less to perfection (intentionally lose games against top teams, play to win versus bottom teams). Lots of puck luck as well.