Coming soon: a weekly roundup of news and insights about the Calgary Flames' AHL affiliate.
For some reason, they're still called the "Stockton" Heat. They might want to look into changing that
Welcome to The Heat Beat newsletter, a totally new hockey thing from some guy on Twitter. Oh, great. You probably subscribe to 100 of these already, and this one isn’t even about an NHL team. Maybe I should have started a WandaVision newsletter instead.
My name is Mike Gould. I’m 20, I live in Calgary, and I watch a lot of hockey. (Probably too much for my own good). You may have seen me publish columns in the past about the Calgary Flames and the Arizona Coyotes. I also maintain a robust LinkedIn page that I haven’t checked in a week, sorry.
This hockey season is unusual for a lot of reasons, and you definitely don’t want me to tell you how unprecedented and challenging these times are (did I inadvertently do it just now? Hard to tell). The Calgary Flames are sort of disappointing—I guess that’s not so weird—and the rest of the NHL is trucking along despite worryingly frequent game cancellations and postponements.
Maybe the strangest part of this season, at least from a Flames perspective, is that an American Hockey League team will be playing out of the Scotiabank Saddledome. To create maximum roster flexibility and reduce travel, the Flames have temporarily recalled their entire farm team to Calgary. The “Stockton” Heat will be playing their 2020-21 season in the AHL’s North Division, competing against the Toronto Marlies, Laval Rocket, Victoria Salsa, Manitoba Moose, and Belleville Senators. One of those is actually a defunct junior “A” team from the 1990s, but I refuse to say which.
Yes, by the way, it is pretty odd that they are still being called the Stockton Heat this season. That being said, if you told me that “Stockton” was the name of a new community in suburban Calgary being built adjacent to “Auburn Bay,” “Evanston,” or “Mahogany,” I would only ask how deep they’re making the artificial lake.
The Flames have never before had an AHL affiliate based in Calgary. In fact, you would be forgiven for assuming the organization has had a desire to situate its farm team as far away from the NHL club as possible. Prior to the Heat’s tenancy in Stockton, California, the Flames’ AHL franchise made stops in Glens Falls, New York (as the Adirondack Flames); Abbotsford, British Columbia (as the Abbotsford Heat); the five (!?!?) Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois (as the Quad City Flames); Omaha, Nebraska (as the Omaha Ak-Sar-Ben Knights, a.k.a. where Mark Giordano got his first big break); and in Saint John, New Brunswick (as the Calder Cup-winning Saint John Flames).
The Heat playing the 2020-21 season in Calgary presents a unique opportunity for increased coverage by those who closely follow the Flames. With the big club thus far mired in a strange funk, I’m increasingly inclined towards the idea of primarily focusing on the team’s prospects this season.
I have been accredited with FlamesNation.ca to cover to Heat at the Saddledome for this upcoming 2020-21 AHL campaign. I’ll be able to attend each home game and speak to the coaching staff and players on a regular basis. In addition, I have an active AHL TV subscription for this entire season which will enable me to watch road contests and clip highlights. I anticipate getting into video analysis of the team’s games and taking extended looks at the play of certain prospects.
My Twitter page (@miketgould) will feature all of my in-game thoughts during this upcoming Heat season. I’ll be live-tweeting games and posting highlights from that account. This little newsletter also has a Twitter page (@theheatbeat) which will serve as a sort of aggregate or hub for every piece of Heat content (whether it be a column, recap, newsletter, or highlight video) published by yours truly. Of course, The Heat Beat (the first “T” is always capitalized, according to the style guide I just made up) in column/recap form can be found here.
What purpose does this page then serve, exactly? Well, The Heat Beat newsletter is something entirely different. While my other articles and tweets will be a way to effectively get across vital bits of information in a mostly stenographical format, I wish to use this space to shift perspectives. After digesting everything I’ve witnessed over the past week of Heat hockey, this newsletter will turn it into a sort of cornucopia of different types of content. Some sections might use video and dig into certain little plays made by various Flames prospects. Others might feature human interest stories using insights gleaned from conversing with a player. It’s entirely possible that I do a power ranking of every haircut on the team. Look, this is still very much in its planning stage.
The first edition of The Heat Beat newsletter will be released on Thursday, Feb. 25, four days after the Heat open their season against the Marlies. It’s probably reasonable to expect further releases to come on subsequent Thursdays. By the time that this coming Thursday rolls around, Future Mike will have likely gotten around to making more concrete scheduling plans. Stay tuned to either of the Twitter accounts linked above for any updates of that nature.
To summarize… I have long wanted to create a writing platform of my own. It has been a long journey to get to the point where I feel comfortable enough to create something like this and to put my words out into any sort of totally independent space. I hope this newsletter brings you something of value each week, whether that be an interesting video breakdown or an enlightening quote or even a hilarious dad joke. (I’m an uncle, which means my dad jokes are even worse than you might expect).
If any of this sounds interesting to you, please click the button below. Did I mention that all of this is free?
In the meantime, tell your friends! (<—— This is the one part of Substack’s default message that I didn’t change. It seemed so earnest and I kind of adored it. Am I reading too much into this? Probably).