Dec 6, 2014; Calgary, Alberta, CAN; Calgary Flames defenseman Mark Giordano (5) (second from left) celebrates his first period goal against the San Jose Sharks at Scotiabank Saddledome. (Candice Ward-USA TODAY Sports)

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

So the Calgary Flames are good, and no one saw that coming.

How could they? This is a team with maybe four players that other teams would really and truly step over their grandmothers to acquire; a team that spent most of the summer pegged as being a lock to spend the year in the league's basement.

But a check of the standings here in early December shows Calgary as being very comfortably in a Western Conference playoff spot, and sitting with losses in the single digits through 28 games. It seems impossible, and yet here we are.

The thing is that the Flames have done this in much the same way the Colorado did in 2009-10 and Dallas did in 2010-11 and Minnesota did in 2011-12 and Toronto did in 2013 and Colorado (again) did in 2013-14. They are very comfortably one of the worst possession teams in the league, something that typically does not portend a comfortable playoff position through October, let alone the first two-plus months of the season. They've gotten very good goaltending first from Jonas Hiller then Karri Ramo, who seem to revel in swapping the ability to stop 92 percent of shots and then 89 percent every fortnight or so, but never overlap. They've also gotten just about every bounce to go in at their own end, and have the second-most goals in the league despite taking fewer shots per game than everyone but New Jersey and Tampa.

Put another way: The Flames are winning, with regularity, but they shouldn't be.

And as with those aforementioned “winning-but-shouldn't-be” teams that preceded them, the fans have generally taken up the idea that whatever it is the Flames do systemically, it is contributing to a long run of sustainably high shooting percentages for and low shooting percentages against. That is, they've figured out the alchemical formula to turn a leaden team into pure gold. If so, they'd be the first team to ever do this long-term, and indeed they're already pressing their luck.

Already this season, the Flames have entered the third period trailing 13 times, and they've somehow come back to win six of those games. By comparison, the Oilers are in the same ballpark, and have even been able to extend any such game to overtime just once (they, of course, lost).

So what, according to Calgary fans and media types, do the Flames do that their forebears do not, which would drive shooting percentage to such significant-outlier levels?

Two things, actually:

1) Have two of the four or five best defensemen in hockey this year, and 2) Work hard.

The second of these points is of course ludicrous, because low-talent teams obviously have to work harder to keep games close, but it's not as though high-talent teams do not work hard. There's a comparison to be drawn, I think, between what the Flames have done to this point and what a jockey with a crap horse might do right out of the gate if he were trying to impress people: Whip the hell out of that old nag, get it out to an early lead, and even if (when) you fade down the stretch, well, at least you led for a while. As with the Avs and Stars and Wild and Leafs and Avs again, these are all clubs that pretty much collapsed as the season wore on, and it wouldn't be too shocking to see a late run in which the Flames win four out of 20. At least they started out hot, though.

As to the thing about the defensemen, I've said over and over again the Mark Giordano and TJ Brodie should be top-3 Norris vote-getters this year. No one else is in their ballpark in terms of generating offense (because the Flames have no one else to do it) and playing top competition on a nightly basis and significantly outperforming their garbage teammates, of which they have many.

The argument that none of the aforementioned hot starters certainly did not have even one elite defenseman, let alone two, and thus you might be able to make a cogent enough argument that they'd be able to suppress shot quality at the other end (albeit for the roughly one-third of the game they play). But those teams have often had elite forwards, which Calgary plainly does not, to drive shooting percentage at the other end; Josh Jooris is not, say, Phil Kessel or Matt Duchene. Those with neither tended to collapse in the ugliest fashion imaginable.