The Calgary Flames ring in, or I guess, close out the old year with a victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. Welcome, everyone, to a happy new year edition of Game over Calgary. I'm Peter Klein, and I didn't think this all the way through. Welcome to the show. It's going to be a fun win for the Flames to wrap up the year and a fun way to close things out.

So thank you to everyone who has already tuned in. Make sure you like the video. Subscribe to the channel. We'll talk about what to generally, I do kind of. It ends up being what worked and what didn't work, but I don't think a whole lot didn't work in this game.

So we'll talk about what worked and what worked her in this Flames victory. Although it did get a little bit dicey at the end. Also, at the end of this show, we'll be doing our presser, where you can ask me any questions you would like as we head into 2024. We will start with a question, though, as Conrad has to bail a little bit early to get ready for the Circle K classic final tomorrow. Which, by the way, should be on everyone's sports bucket list to go check out an amazing tournament that happens in our city every single year.

But Conrad asking, was that the flamesiest way to end 2023? Giving up two goals with the goalie pulled? Yeah, no, that was definitely. And then there was that scramble at the end where Connectney gets the chance and I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. No one wants this game to go to overtime.

Can we just not. Like, the Flyers may have even had a chance to put the puck in the net to end it. And they were just like, you know what? Nah, nah, we're good. But yes, no, I was watching that just being like, there's no way.

There's no way they're actually going to blow this, man. I move my head around way too much. Full disclosure. For people who are just listening to the podcast, this isn't going to make a lick of sense, but I'm wearing a happy new year hat. The string that's supposed to attach this to your head broke when I was trying to put it on because big head.

So this thing is very precariously up here right now. But much like the Flames lead was precarious light, but Marchtrom again shuts the door. We'll talk about that coming up in the second segment. But the first segment, we're going to talk about Jonathan Huberto again, but this time positively. So there's that at least I know a lot of people in the market are a little bit frustrated right now about the amount of Jonathan Huberto.

Sorry, discourse there has been, but he gets the point in this one as the jersey zone just pointed out in the chat tonight, he sets up Dennis Gilbert for at the time was the go ahead goal and now it just ends up being one of the goals in a Flames victory tonight over Philadelphia. But for Calgary, the new lines kind of felt like it worked. Feel. Holy cow. It's like I've started New Year's celebrations early, but the new lines do kind of feel like they worked in a four three win.

Mark Dagle in the chat asking what the score was. It's four to three. What was the final tonight? Just another quick aside. I know I'm so all over the place right now.

I really appreciate y'all coming in here and hanging out on this chat. Audi did the New Year's Eve game last year. I wasn't sure entirely what to expect, but already you guys brightening up my night, hanging out and chatting with us here in the chat. But yes, happy new Year for the Flames as they. I think they kind of stumbled on something here.

I like how the forward group played this evening. This was a really strong outing from Calgary. The new line with Huberto Lindholm and Sharon Govich is going to get the most attention because Jonathan Huberto has kind of struggled and this was a good game. Kind of struggled. Might be a bit of an underselling job.

A little bit. This was a good game from Jonathan Huberto and from this top line. Lindholm was kind of the least noticeable on that group. I thought Sharon Govich, a bit of a rough turnover that led to a Travis Sanheim breakaway in the first period. But I thought like, Huberto was buzing kind of all night.

He's making a couple physical plays that lead to chances. He's setting up some opportunities as well. He gets the assist to Gilbert that leads to the goal, that leads to the win for the Flames. So I think this is the way to go here for this one, for the flames, for the next little bit. Sorry, I panicked a little bit because I saw the Habs people chatting in here and I was like, did I put this on the wrong thing?

Because I've done that before, but no, we're on the right one, so that's good. But for the flames like this group, I think this is what you want it to look like because we'll talk about them in the second segment. But Manjapani, backlain, and Coleman looked fine tonight. I thought they actually looked pretty dangerous as well. And so this felt like a night where the flames were actually able to roll all three lines, and that is not something we have seen from this group a whole lot.

Sorry, all three lines? There are four. I understand that, but the three lines that you really want to get rolling, the fourth line, honestly, the fourth line had a good night. They just don't really factor into this a whole lot. But I think that this was a good bounce back from this group, and you could roll the three dangerous lines out there and you could feel comfortable with them the whole time and feel really, really good about what they were doing.

And so maybe this is it. And I get, was it now, like, 118 games into the Jonathan Huberto experiment in Calgary? And so to say, well, maybe now they have figured it out, might be a bit of a stretch. But I do think Huberto has been playing okay at points.

And the thing with him, and it's so difficult because it's like you see, like one point in all of December and it comes on the 31st, and you see what it's going. It's like, okay, signed the big contract, and now he's just cashed in and it's feet up. And I genuinely don't see that. I think this is a guy who's going out there and busting it and really trying to get things going, and it's not working for him. But tonight it worked.

Like, tonight he's never going to be a guy who you fully notice just take over a game, but he's going to make a couple of passes where it's just like, oh, man, that was good. And he makes a good pass on, either he made the pass to get in on the zone entry, or Sharon Govich made the entry and he passes to Huberto, who set it up. But either way, Huberto sets up a really good chance on a rush in the first period, and then he gets the Gilbert pass here that really got this thing going. And if they can get that dude going, I'm not saying, like, oh, man, here comes the Stanley cup because Jonathan Huberto is playing well. But that is such an important thing for this Flames group going forward to get that situation figured out.

And it's only one game and it's only one point, but it was a long time between games like that and points like that for Jonathan Huberto. And so I think the Flames should come away from this one feeling pretty confident that maybe for at least the next little bit. They have found the guy that Lindhome and Huberto can play with if Sharon Govich gets them going. I just thought that they were really strong tonight, and I thought the Flames as a whole were quite strong tonight. Like we were talking about how flamesy it would be if they gave up that that four two lead late with two goals with the goalie pulled.

But it also would have been a bit frustrating. It would have been frustrating for a number of reasons, but it would have been a bit frustrating based off of how well they played in this game. I thought they were pretty clearly the better team throughout and I think pretty highly of this Philadelphia Flyers team. I just kind of thought that they weren't where the Flames were in terms of level of play in this game, and I think the new lines really helped that. Another thing that I was calling for all of last year, and we've seen it a bunch this year, is how well the defense has played in the offensive zone.

Like Gilbert gets the goal, Luke in the chat mentioning Jordan Osterly having he was all over the nice tonight, although I'm not sure that was a good thing. He was all over. He gets in there offensively quite a bit and like defensively it is what it is, but he is kind of all over the place for sure. But I like it when the offense is going like that and like Hannifin is always in there and active in the offensive zone. Anderson, I'd like to see even more of Uyghur is great and you saw it again tonight.

For a team that at times can struggle to score goals, it'd be nice to have the defense contribute. And the defense was able to contribute and so, like I said, they were able to get everything really rolling tonight and that was really nice to see. And I think a good bit of momentum to build now coming off of this one, off of a couple of tough losses in a row where you were starting to see like, man, I don't know if this team, they weren't on the King's level. I thought they played okay against Seattle, and I think they are a better team than the Seattle Kraken are, but they just didn't play like it the other night. And so you're coming off of a couple of losses where it's like, yeah, it's just not going to work out.

Got to start moving, guys. Let's do it. And now to come out with this effort, not saying well now, they played well against the Flyers. Here comes the Stanley cup. But again, it's momentum to build off of this.

And for a Flames organization that still fancies itself a playoff team, as we've talked about a number of times before, this was a nice sign for Calgary. So a lot of things to build on for the Flames. We are building on a lot here on SDPN, including our subscription numbers. So if you could hit subscribe, that would be great. As we work towards 100,000, that just lets us do a whole lot of great stuff.

So if you could do that like this video, share it with your friends. Shout out to Conrad, who shared this in the game discord. That's on the SVPN discord, as well as putting it out on Twitter. I noticed that and I appreciate it. Thank you very much to my guy Conrad for sharing all of that.

Getting ready for Circle K final day tomorrow. But yeah, like the video and subscribe. Conrad has a press conference question. Get yours in now or throughout the show and we'll get to them when we get to the press conference, probably in the next like ten minutes or so because there's but so long you can wear a goofy hat on the Internet like this.

The line changes aren't just to help Huberto. Andrew Benjapini has been a frustrating player here for the last little bit. And I know on this show we've talked a lot about Dylan Dubay. We've talked a lot about Jonathan Huberto. Manjapani has flown under the radar until very recently, but man, oh, man, that penalty tonight was just dumb and it was really frustrating.

But after that, I thought he played quite well. I like most of Manjapani's game tonight, and honestly, I think this is probably the best backlin has played in a little bit. And while those guys, backlund and Coleman are good at getting players, me, I just don't think Jonathan Huberto was a fit necessarily with them. I think that's pretty clear, right? Man, Japani is.

We've established that for a while now, and that's the best manj has looked in a bit. That's the best backlin has looked in a little while as well, and Blake Coleman just continues to be awesome this season. But I thought the kind of secondary story of those line changes was, obviously it was to get Huberto going, but I think it was to get Manjapani going as well. And I think mission accomplished. And that's another reason why you feel so good about it.

Tonight is, like I said, best performances in a bit for backlin and Manjapani. That is such a big line for this team when they can play it against the top offensive unit for Philadelphia or for any team you feel comfortable with that, and then you have the top two scoring lines just going out there and doing their thing. You can start to see where the pieces are fitting now for Calgary. And yeah, it maybe shouldn't have taken this long to get that, but they got the pieces figured out on the second line. Now you can kind of build around that, and it feels like they have certainly started to do that, and I think Manjapani really benefits from that with that performance tonight.

Blake Coleman gets a goal in his 500th game. He has been everything you could want for the Flames. Like, this has been the best stretch of hockey he has played in a Calgary uniform, so I'm happy that he gets rewarded for that, but he has really dragged this team offensively and like the big.

Sorry, the train just absolutely derailed. Oh, all the conversation about the penalty kill. Coleman's been a major part of that and that almost every positive for the Flames. Not everyone. He's not the reason Markstrom is playing well, but there are so many positives that Coleman has a hand in.

And for a Flames team that has been struggling for a long stretch this season, he has been that kind of the guiding light helping them through, and that's been really, really nice. To see Blake Coleman be able to do that. And now to see some jump with his linemates, with backwood and manjapani makes that line all the more dangerous. As I just. I come back to it, this was just a good performance by the Calgary Flames.

Tonight wasn't the most exciting game till the end, but I just thought the Flames played really, really well in this game and there's a lot of things that you can build on and feel good about from a Calgary Flames perspective. And another one tonight is obviously the play of like the. He just missed that last one. I don't know if it was that they were kind of talking on the broadcast, that it was probably tipped so it seemed like it was. But just a swing and a miss on that one for Markstrom.

But overall, again, another strong night from the Calgary Flames goalie. There were some stretches there like Philadelphia gets the power play and two great chances bang bang early on, and if he lets one of those in, we're probably talking about an entirely different game from a Flame standpoint. But he stands strong on that, came up strong in so many big moments. He didn't allow the back. I guess there was a bit of an early goal there, but he is such a calming influence in that net.

This year and it makes life so much easier from a Calgary Flames standpoint to have that guy going in that way one more time. So yeah, on this night, honestly, just a lot to feel good about for the Calgary Flames. Taking a look at where they stand right now in the wild card, they are still a ways out, but they're only five points out. Arizona does have a game in hand and there's a bunch of teams ahead of them. Minnesota, Seattle, St.

Louis, and Edmonton. Those teams are all ahead of the Flames right now. The Flame schedule coming up that they have, it kind of eases up a little bit and it's also set up pretty well here for Markstream to get a lot of work over the next little while. They have a back to back coming up. I think it's next weekend.

Yeah, next weekend they have game Saturday, game Sunday, and then after that it is Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, the whole month. So hope you're ready for a long month, Jacob Arkstrom, because I think they're going to call on him quite a bit. There are some tough games in there. Toronto comes town this month. I believe Edmonton's in town as well this month, but they do have a couple of games.

With all due respect to one of our friends here at game over. Game over Calgary. Anyway, one of the other game over hosts, they play Ottawa, so that should know. Not the biggest challenge, although the way the Flames are playing, I don't know if we can cancel anyone off, but there's a couple of games on the schedule where it's okay, maybe you could work a vladar in, but this is a real big stretch for a Flames team that is still going to be pushing for the playoffs. I would imagine we see a bunch of Jacob Markstrom here in this month and so for him to get things going, I keep saying this month it is still December for the next 3 hours out here in the mountain time zone.

But for Mark trim to get this one tonight and to just keep that momentum rolling, was really nice to see if you missed any of this show today or you just don't want to look at me while we're breaking this down, which I get, you can listen to it in podcast form wherever you get your podcasts, but while you're here, you may as well like the video and subscribe to the channel. A lot of great stuff on the SDPN YouTube channel right now. Game overs for all of the canadian teams across this country. We're also doing game over international for the world juniors that's been going on right now in collaboration with EP Ringside. So that's been a whole lot of fun to be doing.

Also on this channel, we got the hits, we got the CJ show, we got the SDP. So many great things happening on this channel right now. So hit subscribe and make sure you don't miss any of it. Let's get into the presser now. Send in your questions.

I almost gave out the text line for the other place that I've been putting out some content for over the last little bit. But you don't have to text this one in. You can just write in the chat, just send it in and let me know what you guys want to talk about here as we kind of wind down a New Year's Eve episode here of Game over Calgary. Conrad, press conference question. If a goalie mask strap is undone, should knocking it off versus shaking it off be a penalty?

Yeah, I didn't like that. And it gave the Flames a power play and maybe that was part of it where I just, oh, man, power play. And it was funny. As soon as it got to four on four, Kadri gets the goal. I thought that was so funny, that power play.

They can't get shit going right now. Although the power play looked okay tonight, but the power play really can't get anything going for a little bit. But as soon as Calgary has four skaters out there, it's like they throw the cape on and it's like, all right, here we go. And they go in and cadre with a real nice snipe. I didn't talk about him a whole lot throughout the show, but there's only so many ways you can say, oh, and Nazam Kadri is good that there's only so much you can say with that, but that one shouldn't have been a penalty in my opinion.

I get it doesn't look like he's knocking it off, but your straps undone. You're a goalie. That mask is going to be very important. I think, honestly, it's a safety measure. Knock it off so that the next time they're coming in and it's a two on one and you go from one way to the other way.

Like, I'm trying to balance a hat on my head right now. That feels uncomfortable. I would be a little bit worried if I also had to stop a piece of rubber that was coming at me, potentially at my head and my mask could come flying off. So I thought, I understand that you don't want goalies just doing that all the time, but it's not like, if that was starting to happen, then maybe you kind of cut down on it. But for that to just be the automatic.

No, he was delaying the game. He meant to do that. That feels a little dangerous almost to me. So while it ended up benefiting the flames greatly, I would have had no issue with that. Just being a play on, not a play on, I guess, like, stop the play immediately.

But I would have been totally fine with that. Just being like, let the whistle blow, let's move on with the game and just keep things going. That was. I was a little surprised and a little bit like, oh, that's kind of a shitty rule, looking at it when that one went down. As mentioned before, the jersey zone, Huberto point.

Let's go. Yes, he gets a much needed point here to give him now one in the month of December, but that is, I think, just such a huge one. We have Simon saying happy new year and also saying that the Habs have no future. I disagree. I like a lot of what the Habs are building right now.

I know this is game over, Calgary, but I mean, mentioned in the chat, so may as well touch on it. But yeah, I like a fair amount of what the Montreal Canadiens are building right now. Just if anyone could stay healthy, that would be kind of a bit of a benefit to that particular franchise. Everyone struggles at times. Getting back is the real measuring stick, and it seems like, I don't know if Huberto, we've probably seen his last 100 point season, right?

I feel pretty all right with that, but it does seem like there is a lot of work going on to figure out for him to try to get this thing going, and so it does. It shows a lot of character that he is trying to grind it out. Man, Japani got run over on that six on five. That is. Yeah.

Think, man, Japani is still leading the team in penalty minutes. I would be surprised if he wasn't. Yeah, he kind of has Sam Bennett syndrome, where it comes up at the worst times. There was no reason for that Hathaway penalty today and he said, oh, well, Hathaway moved out of the way. Well, just don't.

Why are you engaging in that way at just. It was such a dumb, dumb, dumb penalty, and he's taken quite a few of those. For a guy who I think has a pretty high hockey iq, it's very surprising to me that he has kind of reverted into this, and it's very frustrating because we've talked about a bit before, he is too important to this Flames team to do dumb shit like that. They need him on the ice. If this team is going to go anywhere, he is going to be a part of it.

When we were talking at the beginning of the year, like, where are the goals going to come from? His name came up a lot. Guy who has scored over 30 goals in this league only scored 17 last year. So you think, okay, well, this guy's going to get it figured out and going to push on and it's going to be great. That's not been the case and he needs to get it figured out because he has such an upside on this group.

And I like the player a lot. I like the talent. I like a lot of what he brings. But there's this bit of a shithead that's crept into it now and I don't totally understand it. It's not valuable to the team at all.

He's always had a bit of an edge to him, but it's just like this year, he's just decided, oh, yeah, I'm just going to be a dick now. And it's not working. It's certainly not working for him at this point. So that's been very frustrating so far. Steve saying in the chat, I keep telling my son to not get too excited by how good they're playing.

And I was balanced until the last game versus Nashville. That was the one that hurt. Now I want to bang my head against the wall. Love how gritty they are. No pun.

And the fight they have in them. Power play blows. I'd rather be on the PK at this point. Joking. Obviously, power play got to get better.

And it's funny because that message coming from Steve, who has Flyers logos on his thing. So I'm assuming Steve is talking about the Flyers tonight. You could say all of that about the flames down to the. Well, it was the Nashville game because they had a bit of a frustrating one against the Nashville Predators. But yeah, from a Flyers standpoint, yeah, that power play has to get better and I don't understand how it's not.

I like a lot of the talent that could be out there on that power play for Philadelphia, and it's just like it's kind of stuck in the mud. Calgary has had the same issue and they haven't really got it figured out. But yeah, Philadelphia's power play tonight just kind of felt like a way to kill off a couple of minutes and that was that. But overall, I like this Flyers team. I do have concerns about how sustainable this all is.

It's just the east is really good and you look at New Jersey's out of a playoff spot right now. I think Tampa Bay is sitting on the outside looking in as well. I feel like those two teams are going to figure it. I just. I worry from a Philadelphia perspective that it could come at the expense of the Philadelphia Flyers again.

There are so many pieces on this team that I like. When the whole Johnny Goodreau thing was going on a couple of years ago, I would have loved just a monster deal of Goodreot to Philadelphia for a few parts because there are so many pieces on those Flyers teams that I liked. And that's whittled down over the years for sure. But there's still some spots on it. Like connecting was a factor in this game tonight.

Katerrie has been a big part of the turnaround in just. And I was saying it on the radio out here this week, the league's just more fun when Philadelphia is relevant, and so it's nice to see them hanging around. And Torts has done an awesome job. But yeah, there's work to be done out in Philadelphia for sure. When Pelche comes back, who goes out of the lineup?

That is an interesting question.

Probably. Unfortunately, it's going to be Ruzica who like, I think he was fine tonight, but the issue is, where do you put him? Right, because you're not going to bring Pelche in just to be a fourth line guy. Right? But we saw it tonight.

It's not like, well, can't break these guys up now. They played well once, but Hubert O'Lindholm and Sharon Govich, like, that seems to be working. Zari, Kadri and Paspasol, that seems to be going okay. And then Manjapani, backlund and Coleman. We know that line works.

The one thing I could think of maybe is if you did move Apostol to the fourth line. So you had a fourth line of probably Greer Dube and then Pelche.

And then you could put, sorry, greer Dube and postpasil. And you could put Pelche on the line with Zari and Kadri. I feel like that would be a whole lot of fun. You could kind of shake some things around a little bit. Like, look, talking about the frustration over the past little bit, you could put mange down on the fourth line.

You could have a Greer dupe man Japani fourth or a dewer dube man Japani line. And then you could go like either Pelche, backlund, Coleman, which would be a blast. Or again, move pospusel to that line. And go soul with backlund and Coleman and put Pelche there so that there are ways to do it. But I do think it probably spells the end of soul in a top six role for now with this flames group.

Like he has been great when called upon. But it does seem like kind of not to the same extent as Ruzica, but it does feel like it's kind of like Ruzica where long stretches, it starts to fade into the background a little bit there. Press conference question who is taking the Circle K classic finals, Shaddock, St. Marie's or Phoenix Jr. Coyotes?

I apologize. I haven't watched any of the tournaments so far. So we will go Phoenix. We'll get that one done. When I was at the Rocky Mountain classic, there was a team from Anaheim there and everyone's like, anaheim, what did they.

Oh, they're really good. So I'm just going to assume that Phoenix is the same way. So we're going to give this one to the junior Coyotes. Andrew, I believe. Would that be Boshain saying happy new year and KQ also saying happy New Year?

Deebs 87 off topic question, but how do you feel about Carlson on Pittsburgh? Production slowed way down on a better team? This was always the, since we're just doing NHL news and notes now, this was always the concern with that is that last year was so obviously an outlier and part of it was he stayed healthy, which is great and he's obviously very talented, but he hadn't really shown that guy in a few years, right? And so that was always going to be the concern with trading him. And that's why San Jose desperately wanted to trade him because it's like, man, this guy felt like he was going to be just kind of a contract albatross for us for a long time and now we might actually get shit for him.

Jess, please, can we do this? He's just not that guy. He was for a real good stretch there in San Jose, but I wasn't going to bet that he was going to do it again. I was going to bet that was more the outlier than anything else. And so Pittsburgh's in a real tough spot right now because you're not going to trade Crosby, Malkin and all those guys and just blow it up that way.

But they do feel stuck and it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of improvement coming. And they needed Carlson to be last year CARLSOn and there was no way that was sustainable at all. I know a lot of us wanted it to be because we remember that guy in the Ottawa Senators who was flying around and he was a ton of fun. He's just not that guy anymore. It was cool that he was able to bring that back for a bit with San Jose, but he's just simply not that dude.

And for Pittsburgh of all teams to really sell the farm and go in on that was not great from their perspective. I would say taking Phoenix for the upset I got you again, I wouldn't go a whole lot with my in depth scouting of I don't we'll but we'll roll with that one.

Love of Flames win. But damn, Celebrini looks good. Look, the Flames are going to need a lot of lottery luck anyway if they're going to get Celebrini because you're not going to fall below the Anaheim's and the San Jose of the world. It's just not going to happen this year. So you need the ping pong balls to bounce your way anyway.

May as well just get a couple more to try to go your way and enjoy a couple of wins here from a flame standpoint. But yes, Celebrini has looked really good. All right, that is going to do it for the final game over for the calendar year of 2023. If this was your first time watching us or if you've been with us all year long. Regardless, thank you so much for tuning in and making us a part of your flames or flyers or penguins watching experience or however you take us in.

We so appreciate all of the support. I've had a blast doing these. Looking forward to doing more of them in 2024. I got game one of 2024 with the Minnesota Wild taking on the flames coming up on January 2. But yes, again, from everyone here at SCPN, you all are the best and it has been a blast talking flames with you.

Even though this team has not been a whole lot of fun to talk about, you guys have been riding with us here again, whether it's been day one or hour one, it's been so much fun talking with you. We'll talk to you guys in 2024. Have a happy new year, everyone, and we will talk to all of you later.

Game over.