'There's A Lot Of Belief'

We've all heard the cliché.

Athletes are conditioned not to look too far ahead – for the 'next one,' the game-at-a-time mantra, is all that matters in this racket. 

But with the (real) season less than a week away now, you can’t blame them for getting a bit antsy.  

“We're all excited for camp to be wrapping up,” Blake Coleman said following Thursday’s practice in Calgary. “I feel like we've been able to shake a lot of the rust off and everybody's been really good in camp, so we're ready to see how it carries over.

“We've all played enough games that we can probably start the season (tonight).”

Sadly, they’ll have to wait. 

The Flames have one last task in front of them tonight as they travel to Vancouver to take on the Canucks to round out the preseason. 

At 4-2-1, the locals are pleased with what they’ve accomplished in camp – from integrating new players into key roles, to workshopping a radically new powerplay and defensive-zone structure, it’s been a lot to squeeze into a relatively short period of time.

Tonight’s matchup will help bring it all together, with the veterans getting one last chance to feel things out before the points count on Wednesday.

“One more game left to get everything under wraps, get those systems down pat and get that compete level up,” said MacKenzie Weegar. “(Tonight) sets you up for a big opening night and the rest of the way. Everybody wants to have high confidence going into that first game.”

“It’s fine-tuning at this point,” added Coleman.

Tonight, then, has value.

While it’s easy to look at this matchup – the last of an eight-game slog – and dismissively look past it, consider where the Flames are at (and how far they’ve come) organizationally over the past few months. By now, we’ve covered the greatest hits, from the overwhelmingly positive atmosphere in the dressing room, to some bold, new strategies and the infusion of youth. Certainly, this has led to a seismic shift in tenor, both on and off the ice.

But smiles and good vibes don’t necessarily result in wins.

This is a business, after all, and one thing that’s become abundantly clear over the past few weeks is how motivated the group is to prove people wrong.

With how things ended last year – 178 days ago – the Flames aren’t backed by the so-called ‘experts.’

But they do have the one thing that actually matters:

“Everybody has that belief factor,” Weegar said. “You have to have it. You've got to believe that this is the team that's going to get it done. And it's led by Backs. Now that he's got the 'C' – and everybody kind of knew that he was the captain (before) – but he's leading by example in there, he's making everybody believe.

“For me, you want to compete as hard as you can every night and believe that you're going to win the Stanley Cup.

“There are guys in there that have so much passion for the game and we're all so close to each other, even though we've been here for a year. That's what you've got to have. The tighter the group is, the farther you're going to go.

“There's a lot of belief in there.”

Count Coleman – a two-time Cup winner – in that group as well. Sometimes, pressure can be a bad thing and the Flames have no better proof of that than when they were hand-picked at a Cup favourite last year, only to fall short of their goals.

Internally, you can bet that’s where their heads are at again this year. But maybe the team will be better served as an underdog in the public eye.

A dark horse with an us-against-the-world mentality.

Truly, only time will tell.

“There was a lot of noise last year,” Coleman said. This year, there's maybe the occasional person that thinks we have a good squad. We've been overlooked a lot – and I think that's a great role to be in. I think I've been that way my whole career, my whole life, so I'm excited to step back in that role. And we've got a lot of guys that have that fight in them and that fire to win.

“At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what people are saying. You saw last year, it's what you put on the ice.

“For us, we're looking one day at a time, one game at a time. The first one's here against Winnipeg and we'll get the ball rolling.”