The Calgary Flames Are Better Than The Edmonton Oilers

This is a guest post by our brother, Jonas. He watches plenty of puck and loves to talk shop 

over a few beers so we thought we'd let him contribute his thoughts on Dirty Dangle.

Looking a little thin on top, Dallas.

That is a statement I did not expect to make this season, but through my observations of staying up late to abuse my free NHL GameCentre Live preview, my opinion is that the Calgary Flames are the best team in Alberta. Perhaps one of the more interesting things I noticed during my watching was that of each coach's facial expression which can tell a lot about a team. To the north in Edmonton, Dallas Eakins always looks pissed off and in disbelief that his defence can be that bad. He has some great hair and we worry about it going grey or worse - falling out. Down in Calgary, Bob Hartley looks awfully proud of how hard his team competes every night and sometimes you even catch him smile.

Breaking That Sophomore Slump

The bench was a familiar spot for Nail Yakupov last season

It's often difficult to live up the expectations of a great rookie year, especially when that year was a condensed 48-game season. There was no time to trail off and many rookies performed well making for a very interesting Calder Memorial Trophy vote that resulted in a tight race for first and 7 players earning first-place votes. Such was expected with a smaller sample of games and nobody should be surprised that many of those top rookies in 2013 petered out this past season. Well, those players had their slumps and now look forward to getting back on track as future NHL stars as they enter their third seasons and shake off the memories of the past year.