“…That’s why these series are seven games…”

Several valuable lessons for fans and other followers of the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers in the most recent doubleheader televised as part of the NHL’s revamped, and surprisingly attractive, playoff package.

The New York Islanders gave the Philadelphia Flyers a lesson in the early-evening effort and the Dallas Stars followed with an impressive victory over the Colorado Avalanche.

In the Islanders triumph, the lesson was the value of discipline and patience.

In the later test, believe it or not, the lesson was the value of discipline and patience.

Both Calgary and Edmonton showed a distinct lack of those virtues as they were ushered out of the playoffs. Calgary blew a chance to take a stranglehold on its series with Dallas by failing to hold a lead for all of 12 seconds; Edmonto frittered away leads in all four of their losses to Chicago in a previous round.

Edmonton’s flaws were much more obvious, largely because they showed more often. Had they seen a preview of New York’s winning effort Monday night, they would not have chased scoring opportunities so rashly when they had a lead to protect. Coach Barry Trotz’s disciplined team scored the only first-period goal and then spent incredible energy barricading every attempt by the talented Flyers until Jean-Gabriel Pageau stretched the margin late in the second period.

Afterwards in what became a 4-0 shutout, there was no real threat that Philadelphia could come back, or even could end Semyon Varlamov’s shutout.

There was some brief temptation to criticize Sherwood Park product Carter Hart’s performance in goal for the Flyers. He was deep in the net on Andy Greene’s goal in the first period and on his knees when Pageau clinched the decision. But the young Alberta kid was brilliant at other times. He did not lose the game; the Flyers lost it as a team that lacked the discipline and patience of its conquerors.

The Dallas victory was marked by Colorado’s lack of those vital qualities, but the Avalanche added a flaw that may have been even more devastating: they showed an immense lack of confidence as soon as their sound 2-0 lead disappeared on a pair of shocking 5-on-3 Stars power-plays.

Granted, Dallas got some good breaks — one on Esa LIndell’s goalmouth shove at a loose puck that was not clearly shown to be over the line, the other on an Alex Radulov tally that deflected twice before hopping over the head of goaltender Pavel Francouz.

The Lindell goal was the ultimate winner. If it did not steal all of the Colorado confidence, it certainly came close — and the fluke that bounced off Radulov grabbed the rest.

Philadelphia’s win came in the best-of-seven series opener, leaving the Flyers some time to develop a scheme that might humanize the machine-like Islanders.

Avalanche veteran Gabriel Landeskog downplayed his team’s shaky position after its second consecutive shaky performance.

“We’ll be all right,” he told a post-game questioner. “That’s why these series are seven games.”

https://www.todayville.com/edmonton/cfl-faces-very-difficult-future/

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Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

Published on July 14, 2025

Todayville

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Cody Ciona

‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’

Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.

Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.

That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.

“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.

Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.

In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.

According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.

The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.

For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.

“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.

“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”

As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.

“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.

Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.

“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.

“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”

The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.

Alberta

Alberta Next: Taxation

Published on July 14, 2025

Government of Alberta

A new video from the Alberta Next panel looks at whether Alberta should stop relying on Ottawa to collect our provincial income taxes. Quebec already does it, and Alberta already collects corporate taxes directly. Doing the same for personal income taxes could mean better tax policy, thousands of new jobs, and less federal interference. But it would take time, cost money, and require building new systems from the ground up.