I’ve been following the Flames for the past two seasons or more with thanks and input from my friend, colleague and fellow Boltsmag contributor Keith as we usually spend time talking things up each and every day during the hockey season.

The Flames have been through a lull much like the Lightning had been in one before last season. With the longest active streak of non playoff appearances, the city of Calgary lusted for the opportunity to get back in the playoffs again — let alone reach the Cup….

And now they are (at most) seven games from possibly raising the cup in Calgary.

I told Keith after their first round victory over Vancouver that they had the next round made as they faced the Detroit Red Wings. I looked back to the Lightning facing off against both teams and if it weren’t for Roman Turek, the Flames would have been a much tougher opponent for the Bolts on their journey in Western Canada… As for Detroit — the Lightning went toe to toe with them and (I believe) would have eventually won if overtime wasn’t simply 5 minutes in the regular season. That being said, I believed Calgary could and would go toe to to with Detroit and best the Red Wings.

And it happened.

Hats off to Darryl Sutter who in my opinion is now a virtual shoe-in for the Jack Adams award for best coach of the year. Battling injuries and the tough, tough Western Conference and taking his team all the way to the finals.

The “Pass the Friggin’ Torch’ Tour 2004 is almost at its last destination — what is left is a little thunder and Lightning… We’ll see if that can happen at Wachovia Center tomorrow night.

Ya gotta love The Instigator

NHL.com has a poll asking who’s currently the leading candidate for the Conn Smythe Trophy so far?

Now, I could make mention of the Flames voting urge once again, skewering the polls but there is only 50 thousand votes registered at this time… Jarome Iginla, Keith Primeau and
Miikka Kiprusoff lead voting while Richards - who has scored Game Winning Goals over and over again during this playoff series, has a measly 4.35 percent of the vote as it stands right now.

Not many listen to my pleas on here to vote but please - do so! Show them Bradmaster is more of an MVP candidate than they are letting on to.

It would seem the NHL is very over the top about getting people to watch their product in High Definition due to widescreen telecasts, finer detail, and thus (because of both of the aforementioned reasons) a better telecast for fans to follow.

But the most un-nerving thing about standard 4:3 presentation of the NHL (for all you non technophilies out there, that 4:3 reference is the aspect ratio of a standard television set) is the action is chopped off and thus you miss a lot of what is going on, on ice. I can sit through a telecast as long as they don’t jump from camera to camera (EPSN does a great job making me wish I was at games. And, btw, the EPSN spelling isn’t incorrect, more on that later), but most fans cannot. Hockey has traditionally translated very poorly to television… …And thus the NHL is pushing for fans to get HDTV’s because of the better translation.

Which is bullshit.

Once again the league does a great job giving the wrong, most costly solution to the problem. They’ve been upgrading TV equipment and they have HD Telecasts in many markets (if not them all) along with their national TV deals. That does not, however, get non-NHL fans to watch the game. It might INSPIRE NHL fans to drop a wad of cash on an HDTV (which I won’t) but it doesn’t solve anything, it doesn’t bring in new viewers.

How do you resolve this? Well, my solution won’t be agreed with by some who will say “This will make the puck even harder to follow” but if the NHL were to start showing games in widescreen on standard telecasts (16:9 aspect ratio - what you see on widescreen DVD’s and in movie theaters) you would have a wide glimpse of the action. Oh, those “Annoying” black bars would be at the top and the bottom of the screen but I would gladly take that and seeing all the action over being stuck at one end of the ice and not being able to tell what’s going on down ice.

Maybe it won’t convert people, but it’s a much easier remedy for the problem than asking people to pony up 1500+ dollars for a new TV and then special cable subscriptions for HD channels.