The Flames are changing EVERYTHING...

The Calgary Flames have been an organization that has had plenty of culture change over the years with players not wanting to stay but the current crop of Flames are changing everything. The Flames are building something special especially at the human level which is imperative for success. 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 you 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 fam before we get into this This awesome culture change happening. Let's talk about last night's game where the Flames did fall to Seattle in overtime. We've already played Seattle four times. I gotta be honest, I'm sick of the Kraken. Thank goodness we probably will not play them again until next season. But we do lose this 1-2-1. To be quite honest, Seattle, they were just the better team. The Flames, they... Played well when it counted and they hung on for a point on the road, which is, you know, a lot to ask for. Well, I mean, it's not a lot to ask for, but it's the least you can ask for out of this team. They were able to do that. If we get into the box score here, at least for the players who got on the score sheet, it's a bit of a smaller one. Dustin Wolfe with another quality start. Very happy with how he played. Two goals against on 29 shots faced for the 27 save. Performance, .931 save percentage, not too shabby. There were other guys who played quite well in this game. Kevin Ball has looked... Excellent lately. And he was great again last night. I mean, Martin Pospisil kind of stole the show with his peskiness for sure. You know, he ran over their goalie and was just kind of all over the place for a bit. Klapperdas looked great. Castagne looked great once again. The fourth line, honestly, was just spectacular. But yeah, the offense has dried up a little bit over the past few games here. But Sharangovich finally gets a goal. I think it was his first point in eight games or something like that. And then Weigand and Frost, who are kind of being... Gonna be, you know, main men of this video in just a second here. They both pick up assists on the goal as well. I believe it was also Frost's 200th career point. So congratulations to him on the milestone. The OT winner. By Matty Beniers, wasn't exactly the most thrilling play for the Flames. I love Matt Vejmelka, but he chucked an absolute pizza right up the middle for Beniers' winning goal there, which is a little bit too bad that that's how that game ended. But yeah, it happened pretty quickly into overtime there. And what was a very late game, of course. If you stayed up and watched, I absolutely commend you. But yeah. Focusing on Dustin Wolfe, once again, he played great. And I do, of course, you probably already know, but I have a great goalie update that'll come quite a bit later in this video. But Wolfe, he, again, like we showed before, he did give up two goals. Still, the .931 save percentage is great. He was great when we were killing penalties as well, which is essentially all you can ask for. And as I showed, it was another quality start. And that's, you know, I'd say four of the last five starts here, but three in a row, some quality starts. The way we at Digest Media, you know, kind of categorize that or, you know, the statistic we use is more so by, yeah, was the save percentage above .900 and was the goals saved versus expected positive, which is kind of the way it goes. You can still have a quality start in a loss, like last night. Usually quality starts obviously come in wins. Yeah, you can run into a goaltending battle every now and then, kind of like last night. But very good to know that Wolf has been great in Cooley's absence, which is not a sentence I thought I'd be saying when the season first started, of course. And yeah, we'll of course touch on Cooley in a little bit later. Again, he's trending upwards as the season has gone on. He obviously sat for a couple weeks there towards the end of October, but it started off with a very shaky season for Wolf, but it also was for the Flames. The team's playing better. The goaltending has been better despite the loss last night. A stat I saw is actually the Flames have the highest team save percentage after those first five games of the season in the entire NHL. So obviously they're playing quite well. The goalies and the team defense overall. Where does that put us in the standings now? It was our first Daryl Sutter point of the season. So we're just a couple points out of a playoff spot. Currently, Nashville has... Five Daryl Sutter points, isn't that crazy? But we're in kind of a big log jam, which is expected at the beginning of the season and what, you know, a lot of people, as Captain Obvious would say, a wide open Western Conference right now. We're only 16 games into the season, but yeah, it wasn't the worst loss last night, I guess is the best way to say it. Now let's get into kind of the bread and butter of this video, and it kind of has to go with how the Flames rallied around Zach Whitecloud. Or more so what I kind of want to call as a bit of a culture change, which is pretty cool. And I think since this culture change is happening, you know, we're trending up this season because of the kind of camaraderie and brotherhood that this team currently has. Now, where am I getting this all of? Where am I pulling this out of? It was actually an article that Eric Francis just put out today. Not going to show it, but please, I implore you to go give it a read. It's a really, really good one. It'll just make you fall in love with these players even more. But just to give you context, Scenario-wise, Zach Whitecloud spoke out and said that he essentially went through what was the worst day of his life up to this point, which sucks. Him and his wife had to put down his dog, which is, of course, very sad. But he said that the boys rallied around him, and he kind of got given the hard hat after the game, you know, player of the game. It was after the 6-2 win against Seattle, actually. And the best quote was just, I appreciate you guys and love you boys. Loves this team. He has spoken out about, you know, wanting to be here. He's a leader in the locker room. He's an awesome man in the community as well. He wants to be here, but even more so, he just loves this team, this group. Of humans, not even just hockey players, but of humans, which is so great to see. You know, over the years, we've had players who have changed the culture a bit and wanted to be here, despite, you know, even some of them being American, like a Blake Coleman. He never said he wanted out, still traded him away. Weeks. Think of how he was. He absolutely wanted to be here. I know he's Canadian, but he still recently spoke out about how much he loved playing in Calgary, how much he loved playing in Canada, before obviously being traded to Utah, where he's having a lot of success and the team is having a lot of success. lot of success, but still we we've over the years heard, you know, kind of a bit of a culture change going on with, you know, players actually wanting to be here. And it's a place where players want to play, which I think is most important. One of the main men with that as well is Michael Backlund. And what did Zane Parekh say about Michael Backlund? He said, he just sets a tone and he's the reason we have such a good. Culture. So Parekh, someone who we hope kind of sets the tone for the culture for the foreseeable future, maybe next couple of decades here, you know, he gives all the credit to Michael Backlund, who has been here the longest by far and has absolutely been part of that culture. Obviously, Backlund has wanted to be here, has promoted that, been a great man in the community. So, so glad that he's kind of passing that on to the next generation as well, which is exactly what you want to see. Huska as well, he got in on the action. He said, it's about the way you prepare, compete, and support your teammates every day. day. It's not just about winning. It's not just about blah, blah, blah. We know that with the Calgary Flames, but the adding the part of supporting your teammates is so, so important because we see it as, yeah, we just want these guys to go out and win a bunch of Stanley Cups. They do too, trust me, but it's great to know that there is that human aspect being talked about as well. You know, White Cloud, if we take a look at his stats this season. Not going to blow you away offensively, but defensively, he's absolutely in there. We know how valuable he is. Plays big minutes, has been the main guy on the penalty kill. We would love to have him around as well. Another person is Morgan Frost. He said, I would love to stay first and foremost, and then went on to have a much longer quote. But that's already, you know, a guy like White Cloud, a guy like Frost, they want to be here. They are the two guys on the Flames most involved in trade rumors lately. And you think of the past couple of years, Everyone who kind of gets involved in these trade rumors eventually gets traded. You look back to, obviously, you kind of started with, you know, Lindholm, Tanev, Hannifin, that era, Markstrom, Mangiapane, good old Andrew. And then, you know, last season with Kadri, Weegs, Coleman into the offseason, those guys that a lot of people would expect White Cloud and Frost to eventually get traded as well. But they absolutely want to be here. And expanding on what Frost was saying, he said, I think there's opportunity for me to play and grow with these guys, which is just exactly what What you want to hear from your players. So nice to hear. I think a lot of fans would like to keep him around. There are a lot of fans who wouldn't. They would rather trade him away. But no matter what, what we're hearing is absolutely great. And this culture shift is outstanding. One final quote here from White Cloud is him saying, I feel like I've really integrated into the community. Calgary is home. You don't hear that from all these players. Think of the players, you know, in the past few years here who have wanted to leave and have been very vocal about it. So the Flames are in a position where obviously they can't afford to keep these players as of right now. So there's definitely the opportunity to keep them and maybe continue building upon this culture. We're already seeing a culture shift with these younger guys, but the veterans we have right now are absolutely doing their job as well. It's just. You know, a wonderful time to be a Flames fan because of this great group of guys that we get to follow each and every day. Now, before we get into the comment of the day, I do have quite a few miscellaneous updates here. And the first one will be that promised goalie update here. You have probably already seen it, but the Flames, they have assigned goaltender Arseny Sergeyev back to the AHL Wranglers. The Wranglers are on a five, or sorry, are on the road for five games starting Friday night in Colorado. So he'll be involved in that. But as Pat Steimer points out, this is great news on the Devon Cooley front. He's missed the last four games with a lower body injury, but sounds like he's ready to rejoin the group. And retroactively, the Flames, of course. Of course, did recall Cooley as well. So he wasn't lying when he said that he heals really fast. I think a lot of people were expecting him to be out for quite a few weeks. He's already back, only missed four games, which is pretty insane. Next update I have is, I mean, we got to talk about Wittenbach at least once a week. He was actually named the ECAC. Forward of the month. I mean, last season it was always he was the rookie of the month or forward of the month, but he does get another one here. So the New York native is tied for the lead among ECAC hockey skaters in points to begin the season with 12, while also ranking second in assists with eight and tied for fifth in goals with four. Wittenbach's 1.71 points per game also leads all players with a minimum of three games played. We know that once again, he's having an outstanding season. We hope that continues. And there's a little accolade for him there. Keeping on the prospect noise, Ryan Pike here says, a reminder, definitely going pro in 2027-28 will be Theo Stoxalius. Most likely going pro in 2027-28 will be Harrington, Carls, Reschney, Wittenbach, and Potter. Now this doesn't necessarily mean with the Flames. It could absolutely be with the Wranglers as well. But all those guys are most likely going to be professional hockey players as of next year. We'll see. Carl's still pretty young, but the rest of those guys I know certainly want to be. Maybe going pro next year would be Hextall, Hoskin, and Jameson. Hoskin having a very good college season as well. I haven't spoken about him much, but he's going crazy. Hextall, obviously. Very high pick in last year's draft in Jameson, most likely going pro as well, probably destined for the Wranglers. But the youth is coming, no matter what. They are up and coming. They'll probably be ready to go, most certainly for next season. And we hope we see a lot of those guys in flame sweaters at the end of this season as well. The last thing I wanted to show as well was just this insane stat I saw from Data Driven Hockey over on Instagram. So the win percentage. When the Flames score first, well, actually, this is for every team in the NHL, as you can see, but there's a drastic, drastic change for the Flames between scoring first and scoring second. Now, you would assume your team's going to win when they score first compared to when they score second, but, well, not even score second, but just don't score first, I guess is the better way to put that. So, they are, what is that, eighth in the league. Um, when they score first, which is absolutely outstanding. Personally, I can't even see the percentage there. Let me lean in over 85% of the time they win when scoring first. But if we get into, um, when they're trailing first, that's a much better way to say it. Look at that. They are the third bottom team at just. 12 and a half percent, so that's not good looks. The Flames are a great team when they score first. They are not when they are trailing first, so that kind of is what it boils down to, as well as the special teams and goaltending, I think, as we kind of continue through this season, playoffs or not, what's gonna happen. Now, let's finally get into the comment of the day to wrap up this video, as we love to do here on the channel. Comes from yesterday's video, of course. Goes slightly with what we were talking about before, but William here says the Calgary Flames have finished in the bottom four standings exactly once since the draft lottery in 1995. We've picked top three, never. Bottom three teams have secured a top three pick 74 out of 93 times. The stats back up team tank with that big conversation. Would it be better for the flames to make the playoffs this year? Would it be better for them to tank, try and get a top pick? And this is funny because it almost contradicts itself saying, yeah, the flames, you know, they never finished last. So what's the point? But Bottom three teams, you know, essentially do have really high statistics of getting that top three pick. So makes more sense to tank and try and get that top pick. I think that also goes with that one, you know, tweet I showed yesterday that I knew would rile some people up saying that, you know, the Flames just need to miss the playoffs in order to get the first pick. They don't have to finish last, but obviously the lower you finish, the higher chance you have, and you can guarantee yourself a top three pick if you do finish last. So. Very interesting overall, but just wanted to go over that once again. Thank you so much for watching this video. 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