Stampede Summary

With the Stampede in Calgary winding down, Dion Phaneuf looks over to Jay Bouwmeester as they receive their week's bar tab and says "Don't worry Jay, you still have five million left for this year". By the way, for Flames fans, are you concerned that you just spent almost 7 million per season for a Bill Gates look-a-like? Weird.In Calgary, Darryl Sutter stuck to his guns, didn't make any noise after the Bouwmeester trade and now the defense is the story of the summer. The Flames' top 4 defense is the most expensive in hockey (over 20 million for Jay, Dion, Regehr and Sarich, just passing Detroit's fearsome foursome). A common misconception is that Calgary had trouble scoring goals last season. However, they ranked 8th in goals per game even with their power play ranking 21st in the league - I thought they had issues but they clearly did not. More of an issue would be their power play and their 23rd rank in the goals against department.

Therefore, the addition of Bouwmeester will surely boost their power play offense as well as give them a great upgrade to their team defense. Less minutes where Dion is counted on to play defense is good, right? Hopefully for Flames fans this rejuvenated defense corps will enthuse Miikka Kiprusoff who recorded his lowest totals in both save percentage (.903) and goals against average (2.84) last season (even though he led the league in wins, games, saves and minutes). A reliable back up is something Calgary hasn't had for a longtime, I doubt that Curtis McElhinney is the answer, since his AHL success hasn't translated to NHL success.

Overall, the loss of Mike Cammaleri's team-high 39 goals will hurt their goal scoring ability so they will count on some of their younger players picking up the slack. Hot shot prospect Mickael Backlund will make some noise at Calgary's training camp, look for him to have an on again, off again NHL season. Keep in mind, they still have Olli Jokinen, another former 39 goal scorer.

Interesting statistics: 29th in blocked shots, 4th in Penalty Kill, 4th most Penalty Minutes and had only two players with more than 50 points.