Northwest Check - "With The Strength of a Raging Fire" Edition

Gonna make this relatively short because my new job has me dead tired and badly need to relax and dip my feet into a vat of ice. Calgary is living up to its name and has absolutely caught fire. Cool story for them as they're still behind Colorado. Games in hand be damned, the Flames have won a bunch of games in a row and still haven't caught the Avs. Nooch.

Edmonton never amounted to the spoiler role I thought they would play perfectly. They did manage to beat Columbus, however, which is extremely important because it likely brought to an end any hopes the Blue Jackets had of catching and surpassing Edmonton for most ping pong balls in the NHL Draft Lottery. Had the Oilers gotten first overall pick, GM Extraordinaire might have deemed it necessary to draft Nail Yakupov, best known for BEING A WINGER. The Oilers might have just saved themselves from the incompetency of their GM. Bright days in Oil Country, amirite?

Minnesota...hahahahahaha.

Vancouver is absolutely worthless. They're Eastern Conference level of useless. Beating the occasional bad team but losing to the teams that would help Colorado, the Canucks sputtering offense and leaky Luongo has fans jumping aboard the "if they don't care, I don't care, bring on the playoffs" mentality. I hope they get swept in the first round.

---

---

All standings related info taken from NHL.com...

Calgary Flames

Last Week: 4-0-0 5-3 W vs. WPG, 4-3 W @ MIN, 3-2 W vs. SJ, 4-1 W vs. PHX

Conference Standing: 10th Place

Overall Rankings:

• Goals For: 2.38 (25th)
  
• Goals Against: 2.64 (12th)
  
• Power Play %: 17.5 (15th)
  
• Penalty Kill %: 82.9 (11th)

This Week: Calgary takes their suddenly red hot circus show on the road Friday to Edmonton for the second night of a back-to-back. If Edmonton is ever going to help the Avalanche, it's going to be that game. Calgary then returns home for a Sunday night tilt against Columbus and then heads on the road for contests Tuesday at Colorado and Thursday at Minnesota. They legitimately should come out of this week with 8 points.

News: The Flames are hothothot sizzlesizzlesizzle, baby.

Alex Tanguay is lying at the end of this. Or maybe he's telling the truth because the Flames are accomplishing their goal yet again.

Sven Baertschi's fairy tale could end any day now but he wasted no time in making an impact on his teammates.

Matt Stajan is alive. Maybe for real this time.

Transactions: Assigned F Krys Kolanos to Abbotsford, recalled G Leland Irving from Abbotsford.

Injuries:

• Lee Stempniak is out with a high ankle sprain.
• Blair Jones is on IR with a fractured ankle.
• Mikael Backlund is on IR with an upper body injury.
• Chris Butler is on IR with a leg injury.
• T.J. Brodie is day-to-day with an upper body injury.
• Michael Cammalleri is day-to-day with an upper body injury.
• Tim Jackman is day-to-day with an upper body injury.

Colorado Avalanche

Last Week: 3-0-1 3-2 W vs. EDM, 3-2 W vs. ANA, 5-4 W @ BUF, 0-1 OTL @ NJ

Conference Standings: 8th place

Overall Rankings:

• Goals For: 2.48 (22nd)
  
• Goals Against: 2.68 (15th)
  
• Power Play %: 18.5 (12th)
  
• Penalty Kill %: 81.6 (19th)

This Week: After several straight weeks of playing 4 games, the Avalanche get an extra day off this week with just 3 games on the slate, beginning Saturday night at Madison Square Garden where Eastern power New York Rangers await the Avalanche. The Avs then head home to lose to the visiting Calgary Flames on Tuesday and hit the road to lick their wounds at Phoenix on Thursday night.

Edmonton Oilers

Last Week: 1-1-1 2-3 OTL @ COL, 2-3 L vs. SJ, 3-0 W vs. CBJ

Conference Standings: 14th place

Overall Rankings:

• Goals For: 2.64 (14th)
  
• Goals Against: 2.94 (25th)
  
• Power Play %: 21.7 (1st)
  
• Penalty Kill %: 82.2 (14th)

This Week: Edmonton continues to play out the string and play an important role in the playoff races of both conferences as they host Calgary Friday and Phoenix Sunday before hitting the road to give points to both Nashville on Tuesday and Tampa Bay on Thursday.

News: Corey Potter has received the Edmonton Oilers nomination for the Masterton award.

This is not an argument that should be made but because it was, let's all read it and giggle.

Speaking of Tom Renney, homeboy was steamin mad after the team's pathetic loss to reeling San Jose.

Were the Oilers seriously ever thought to be tanking to draft another winger?

Transactions: Recalled LW Teemu Hartikainen.

Injuries: F Ben Eager is day-to-day with a back injury.

Minnesota Wild

Last Week: 0-2-0: 3-4 L vs. CGY, 0-1 L vs. DAL

Conference Standing: 13th place

Overall Rankings:

• Goals For: 2.14 (29th)
• Goals Against: 2.56 (10th)
• Power Play %: 15.4 (25th)
• Penalty Kill %: 82.3 (12th)

This Week: Minnesota's failure of a season continues swirling down the toilet in front of their beloved home fans Saturday versus Carolina in a battle for draft pick positioning and Monday versus Vancouver in a game where the Canucks will surely break out of their funk. Minnesota finishes their week by handing over an important 2 points to Calgary at home on Thursday. Yay.

News: I guess the season is considered lost by EVERYONE because all anybody wants to talk about is Zach Parise.

See what I mean?

....and then there's this, one of the funniest things I've seen all season. State of Hockey GET.

Transactions: None.

Injuries: Lazy copy/paste mode ENGAGE.

• Guillaume Latendresse has been diagnosed with concussion symptoms and is on Injured Reserve.
• Pierre-Marc Bouchard has concussion symptoms and is on Injured Reserve.
• Mikko Koivu is currently out with an upper body injury. He has been shut down until March 13, when he will be reevalutated. He did skate with the team on Tuesday morning but did not take contact.
• Mike Lundin suffered a lower body injury and was placed on injured reserve on February 19.
• Niklas Backstrom suffered a lower body against Montreal on March 1 and is out of the lineup.

Vancouver Canucks

Last Week: 0-2-0 1-4 L vs. MTL, 4-5 L vs. PHX

Conference Standing: 2nd place

Overall Rankings:

• Goals For: 3.06 (4th)
  
• Goals Against: 2.29 (5th)
  
• Power Play %: 21.4 (3rd)
  
• Penalty Kill %: 86.7 (5th)

This Week: Vancouver continues the troll train as they'll probably beat Columbus at home on Saturday and Minnesota on the road on Monday but then lose both road games at Chicago Wednesday and at Dallas Thursday. Lose the games we need, win the games we don't care about. Typical Canucks.

News: The poor, poor Vancouver Canucks. Seriously Tony Gallagher is a fucking clown.

Committing to leaning on your veterans for leadership but not committing to giving them any playing time is a curious decision. But hey, Alain Vigneault is a genius, right?

The Sedins - suddenly not so elite.

As crunch time nears, Roberto Luongo is already starting to show his true colors - again.

Transactions: None.

Injuries:

• Steve Pinizzotto is out indefinitely with a shoulder injury
• Aaron Volpatti is out 4-6 months with a shoulder injury.
• Andrew Ebbett is out 4-6 weeks with a collar bone injury.
• Keith Ballard is out indefinitely with an upper body injury.