These guys have stepped up MASSIVELY... | Calgary Flames News

The Calgary Flames have another road game tonight and there's plenty of reason to keep an eye out for Idar Sunyev all game long as he has been stepping up massively for a poor team as well as the giant and league leader in penalty minutes Adam Klapka. We're going to get to all that more in this video but first I want to welcome you to Flames Digest. I'm Mark Griffith. If you're new around here and you love the Flames make sure to subscribe so you can stay up to date on all the latest news, updates, reports, and rumors revolving around your Calgary Flames. We would love to welcome you to the Flames Digest family and I'm actually going to start this one off with talking about tonight's game the reason for that is because I actually had a whole video prepared around you know those rumors that were going crazy between Connor Zary and Atu Raatu of who at the time was the Vancouver Canucks because he got put on waivers he cleared waivers and everyone was thinking oh my goodness they're gonna make a Zary for Raatu trade lo and behold what happened he got traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs instead mere minutes before I genuinely was going to record this so this is kind of the freestyle version of that decided to talk about Sunyev and Klapka instead so i hope you're pumped about that but i also again hope you're pumped for tonight's game as the flames continue their road trip this time in vegas a place where we have not had much success so far but this one goes at 8 p.m tonight bit of a later start on a weekday hilarious that they use uh middleton mr better than bruce stevich in the graphic as well he's uh kind of on the outs for Flames fans right now despite him being you know a super funny guy but I did again want to kind of focus on Mr. Sunyev because I think you should definitely keep an eye out for him the Flames media team they said keep an eye out for Pospisil which is fair enough he had a great game last game but I want to keep my eye out for Sunyev because he was great in the last two games against Anaheim and his ice time kind of shows why you know he started off against Colorado with less than 12 minutes played then in our first game against Anaheim got almost 16 minutes of ice time and in the last one 13 as well so definitely he's starting to get more minutes as the production increases as you can see he averages now 13 and a half minutes per game which isn't too bad I know a lot of people would like to see him play a little bit more but he hasn't quite you know risen to the occasion I guess we can say or at least earned it well he probably has earned it he's the best forward on the Flames other than Sipyliv of course but another thing that's great about Sunyev is that you know he's finding good places to shoot from if we kind of take a look at his shot map sorry his shot map so far this season he has two goals on just five shots he's shooting 40 yes it is a very small sample size uh one was a bad angle but still a beautiful shot and the other one in the last game was you know essentially a nice pass across to find him in the middle as you can see from the map there but it looks like he's getting shots off from good places more so in the inner slot than anywhere else and then of course the slot and outside for sure so great that he's getting into the right places his expected goals are just going to go up and hopefully his actual goals uh go up tonight as well well just for the season in general so why i would say watch Sunyev tonight is because he can create chances before chasing another goal and that's you know what he's good at he's good at creating chances too despite him seeming like he's just firing on all cylinders he's not as we just saw he's only taken five shots earn offensive touches and trust as well that's why you can watch for him and just follow his role through the line changes as well see when you know maybe the Flames are in the attacking end as soon as he comes on good things usually happen I would also say one thing my dad taught me when I was very young and he would take me to the dome to watch some games is hey just take this one shift watch just one guy on here and obviously it used to be guys like Aguinla or Gaudreau. But nowadays, I'd say watch Sounyev for just a shift. If you can focus on him, I know it's harder when you watch on TV, but just try and just watch what he does even away from the puck, because you can tell he's actually a very smart player and that's why he gets in these good scoring chances, of course. A little bit of a special teams test here tonight for the Flames as they have not a great power play, which is funny because the season actually started with them doing okay on the power play, despite them not being able to score goals. But their penalty kill is very good. I mean, part of that is because they just kill a lot of penalties and take a lot of penalties. But the power play is maybe something that needs to improve a little bit here. 15.4%, it's not like that's horrible. I mean, it's not good. You'd rather be closer to like 20, which is really, really good. Don't get me wrong. I know it's still very early in the season, only six games in. But, you know, Farabee kind of leading the way on the power play so far. So hopefully it won't be too tough of a test here for the Flames. And it's funny because everyone's all doom and gloom with the Flames so far this year. I mean, unless you're just severely team tank, in which case you're having the season of your life. But I thought this was actually a really interesting tweet here from Trevor Neufeld, who he points out that the Flames have the exact same record as they did at the six game mark last season. We were also one in five last year, which is something a lot of people forget. We had a negative 14 goal differential last year versus negative 17 this year. Very similar on paper. Now, last year, we didn't end up being the worst team in the league. So far, I would say we definitely are. I mean, Philly looks terrible. LA looks horrible as well. Chicago is going to Chicago, it seems, even though they got a good win last night or maybe that's a couple of nights ago now. But yeah, the Flames, it's interesting that we're, you know, kind of comparable to last season, actually. Despite this season feeling so much worse, we just seem way worse, you know, this year than we were last year. Maybe it's because last year we could actually score as well. I'm not too sure, but yeah, either way, I thought that was an interesting one to make. Now, the other guy I wanted to point out, again wasn't in my plans for this video originally but i decided hey let's talk about Klapka as well and i found a good article to do that with um as it comes from thomas thomas writes flames klapka is finding his role as depth piece now coming into the season a lot of people didn't want klapka even on the Flames they would have preferred him with the Wranglers or you know take him away for nothing essentially but he's been one of the Flames better players so far this year like i said you know in the intro he leads the league in penalty minutes which is quite quite crazy so far and he's gotten some great goals remember that goal he scored against Colorado even though we got smoked it was still a highlight reel goal and obviously really good last game so start to this season although this season is still fairly new and the Flames are in one of the roughest patches in franchise history Klapka has continued his growth in the league as a solid depth piece that brings tons of physicality with 21 hits good for second on the team only behind Pospisil against the Avs Klapka displayed some nifty hands in tight when he undressed an Avalanche defender with a toe drag before sniping the puck for his first of the season. The goal got quite the reaction from Flames fans as the big man is not known for hands, at least not in terms of Deacon. Maybe he can throw the hands a little as he's shown. Klapka followed that up with another big performance against the Ducks on October 13th, recording the game's opening goal just past the eight-minute mark of the first and a fight against Ducks enforcer Jeff Mallett, whose brother mike is a ufc fighter so essentially he fought a ufc fighter is what i'm hearing here a tough matchup klapka held his own and it came at a crucial time with a game tied 2-2 when previously the flames had let games slip i mean we were barely in you know grasping some of those games earlier in the season even though klapka may not record 35 goals maybe he'll do 34 but probably not 35 or play more than 15 minutes a night his role is key on nearly every nhl team he still has the ability to put up good numbers production-wise as seen in his few seasons with the Wranglers but to be in the NHL you need to know your role right now it is being the Flames tough guy who's ready to pick up 25 penalty minutes when needed and maybe a nifty toe drag goal as a cherry on top and it certainly seems like he you know loves fighting and taking all these penalties or at least getting penalty minutes is a better way to say it but yeah I would say Sounyaev has you know stepped up massively after not starting the year with the team and Klapka has stepped up massively as well he's brought the energy as we just saw he's throwing hits he's throwing fists and he's able to score some goals as well on a team that really struggles to score goals so loving what we're seeing seeing from Sounyaev and Klapka and hope that continues tonight now the last thing I wanted to talk about before the comment of the day is kind of a big launch here as DigestSports.com officially launches today and yes you should absolutely go check it out visit digest sports.com check it out tell us what you think it's obviously still gonna have maybe a few bugs it's got some some work to do a little bit but otherwise it is absolutely awesome it is a sports fan's dream not just if you're a flames fan for genuinely like any sport or at least the big four sports it's so cool it has games like daily games where you guess the player you can guess the career path do a higher or lower thing for different stats it's honestly so cool there's a trade machine that shows the value shows if mock trades are fair there's you know it's deeper than just your normal goals assist points or if you look at a different sport passing yards passing touchdowns rushing yards it's way more in depth than that you can literally look up stats like what are Matt Coronado's you know career stats against Anaheim on the road and it'll give you that or you look up what's Dustin Wolf save percentage you know at home against Pacific Division opponents this season something like that you know and it will actually be able to tell you again there might be a couple kinks to start out but please i implore you to go check it out it is so cool ever since you know i got the beta version a while ago from from the bosses at Digest Media i've been on that site like crazy and i really think you guys should go check it out too you can even watch these videos there as well you don't have to watch them on YouTube it is just super super cool please go visit it if there's something you do like let me know in the comments if there's something you don't like let me know in the comments we will get that fixed asap now let's finally get into the comment of the day here to wrap up the video as we love to do here on the channel comes from yesterday's video of course and this is a good one here from Perry Perry saying big win for the Flames great team effort Mark Van just put Ratu on waivers should Calgary claim him the other rumor is Zari for Ratu go flames go i decided to keep this in because that's exactly what this video was going to be about but of course I saw that Ratu how's that pronounced Ratu by the way but Ratu cleared waivers and I thought this is perfect this will just spark more trade rumors which it did and then he got traded not to us he got traded to the Leafs I could not believe it it would have been a very interesting conversation to have I'm not sure if I would have pursued it but maybe it would have been a good way to offload Zeri in the drama uh which has really quieted down anyway but uh yeah I wanted to keep that in there just to show that that's what this video was going to be about and it would have been you know a really good idea so thank you for proposing that there Perry thank you so much for watching this video please subscribe if you like what you saw here today and have a wonderful rest of your day