The Calgary Flames have played 181 minutes of hockey thus far in 2020-21’s regular season, so obviously now’s the time for sweeping generalizations about how things are going.
Well, no, but we have some limited data to make limited conclusions about what’s working (or not) for the club thus far.
What’s working
Well, the Flames backed up the proverbial Brinks truck to Jacob Markstrom in the off-season in an effort to finally end the decade-long goaltending carousel. And good news so far, Markstrom has been excellent. He stole the team a point over two rough periods in Winnipeg and he held them in during one rough period against Vancouver in their last outing, and the whole point of spending big money on a goalie is that he’ll hold the team in games.