ANAHEIM — Joe Colborne grew up in Calgary, and remembers watching Ryan Getzlaf when he was a gangly young centre with the Calgary Hitmen. Tonight Colborne will be butting heads with Getzlaf over the faceoff dot, a fact that put a smile on Colborne’s face on the morning of Game 1.
“I have so much respect for Getzlaf. I think he’s incredible,” said Colborne, who will play on a line with Mikael Backlund and Sam Bennett. It could be a matchup that Anaheim head coach Bruce Boudreau favours. If so, Colborne would welcome it.
“I actually worked out with him for a while when he was with the Hitmen,” Colborne said. “I’ve watched him very closely and tried to learn from him, the way he controls the puck, uses his body in the offensive zone. He’s a dominant force, and someone I’ve taken quite a few hints from.”
And if Colborne gets a chance to drill Getzlaf during this series, he’ll take it?
“I hope I get about 10 of those chances,” Colborne said.
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Johnny, Monny and Huds
The Flames’ first line was absent for the majority of the first five games of the series against the Vancouver Canucks. They shared a measly seven points, with regular season scoring leader Jiri Hudler getting on the board in just one of those games. The line came up big in the Game 6 finale, however, racking up 10 points to eliminate the Canucks from the playoffs.
In that series, the Sedin line dominated Monahan’s line throughout, but simply didn’t cash in enough chances (two even strength goals) to parlay that advantage into wins. If the Getzlaf line handles Calgary’s No. 1 unit the same way, we’re betting the puck ends up behind Jonas Hiller a lot more often.
On the rebound
Flames starter Jonas Hiller won the Round 1 goalie wars, edging the Eddie Lack-Ryan Miller combo. But few who watched the series came away gushing about his overall play. The principal complaint? Hiller has a way of leaving rebounds hanging around.
The Ducks are a stouter group — especially their top players. Anything left lying around the crease in Anaheim will be a problem.
(Footnote: We’d always heard that a complaint against Hiller when he played here was his inability to cleanly catch pucks. I’m expecting the Ducks to shoot glove hand when the opportunity is there, for that very reason.)
Hiller’s demise with the Ducks came a year ago, when his game faded in Anaheim’s Round 2 series with the L.A. Kings. John Gibson took over the series in Game 4 for the Ducks, couldn’t keep it together, melting down in Game 7 vs. L.A., when Hiller came on in relief.
“It was not fun,” said Anaheim’s starter this year, Frederik Andersen, who watched the carnage with a knee injury. “Gibby came in and played well, but it was a little bit of a mess, I guess. It’s never really a good sign if you get three goalies going.”
Ducks in a row
Anaheim hasn’t played a game since April 22. Their reward for dousing the Winnipeg Jets in four games? Beating the heck out of each other in several long practices this past week.
“They’re antsy to play,” head coach Bruce Boudreau said of his charges. “You just hope that your mindset and your pace of play that you played with in the last game doesn’t take a game to get going. I don’t think it will, but that’s what coaches worry about.”
Winnipeg was bigger, but Calgary is faster. The Jets defence coughed up a lot of pucks against Anaheim’s forecheck, while the Flames defence corps has been the key to everything Calgary does, consistently getting the puck to the forwards while in flight. Calgary has more dynamic scorers than Winnipeg, but again, those scorers are less physical.
There’s only one change in store for the Anaheim lineup, and it comes at the fourth line centre spot. Nate Thompson is in, and Tomas Fleischmann is out. As for the Flames, it looks like Drew Shore will take Mason Raymond’s spot on right wing next to Josh Jooris and Brandon Bollig.
Hello, Last Vegas…?
Of the remaining eight teams, the Flames were given the longest odds of winning the Cup, in odds released by Bodog.com Thursday. Calgary is 12-1 to win it all, while the Rangers are the favorites at 13/4, followed by Chicago (4/1) and Anaheim (9/2).
“(Being a long shot) has been following us around. We didn’t listen to it preseason, and we won’t listen to it now,” said Calgary winger David Jones. “I don’t have any idea what the odds are, but if they’re vastly not in our favour maybe it would worthwhile to put some money down. But I only pay attention to odds at the Kentucky Derby.”
