It’s often been said that the best marketing for a hockey team is winning games.

  Regardless of whether the Flames win enough over the final 3 weeks of the regular-season and beyond, their best marketing feature over the off-season and next fall will be the man who left town on Saturday.

  Sven Baertschi’s unexpected, and until a couple of weeks ago. unplanned venture with the Flames was most positive.

  In the end his performance in 5 games with 3 goals could have an impact on whether or not the teams makes it to the post-season.  He wasn’t the only contributor by any stretch, but the club did win 4 of the 5 matches.

  Unfortunately, he won’t have any say in what happens over the final 10 games starting Sunday in the Scotiabank Saddledome against Columbus.

  He is back in Portland where Winterhawks are one of a number of top contenders for the Western Hockey Leaague title with playoffs starting this week.

  The Winterhawks lost their last 3 games scoring only 4 goals and losing first place in their Division without the LW from Switzerland.  No wonder their was a mini-cry from Portland on Friday when Baertschi played his 5th game with the Flames — a 3-1 loss in Edmonton.

  Now with Lee Stempniak to be one of the injured Flame forwards set to return on Sunday, Baertschi can’t stay in the NHL any longer.

  He’ll be back.  Should the Flames make the playoffs and at any time during their post-season, the Winterhawks be eliminated, he’s eligible to return to Calgary.  Otherwise, it will be September at training camp.

  The marketing of Sven Baertschi, Calgary Flame, has already started.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 17th, 2012 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.