Welcome to Seven Game Segments, a feature where we will regularly investigate the Calgary Flames' qualitative and quantitative performance. Why seven games? It's a big enough sample to get a feel for certain trends and issues, and small enough to provide us a series of incremental snapshots of the season is it develops.
Also, it's the length of a playoff series.
The Flames' first seven games of the season were…uneven, to put it kindly. They finished a single game above .500 thanks to a handful of noteworthy individual performances, but many of the issues that plagued the club to start the season last year reared their ugly head again — suspect defensive work, poor discipline, and sloppy execution.