Just when we assumed there was more chance of Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes again next year . . .

Be advised, this tire-pumping comes with a Warning! label attached:

Caution yourselves against all premature, overt displays of self-deluding optimism. Temper any inclination towards wild fist-pumping. And please hold off on those intensely annoying, fluttering car flags for the time being.

The condition of the patient has been upgraded, slightly, from virtually impossible to wildly improbable. What everyone waits to see now is if it can improve in the next while from wildly improbable to highly unlikely. And take it from there.

Oh, they're still in hospital.

But that's better than the morgue.

What the Calgary Flames have managed to do in the past two and a half weeks is transform outright snorts of derision into mildly quizzical stares, dismissive hand waves into soft, imperceptible I'll-Be-Damned head-shakes.

Baby steps. Small increments. A point weaseled here. Two fully earned there. Forcing overtime or a shootout. Hugging the mast tight through furious third-period squalls. Fighting back when it'd be so much simpler to just flop to the canvas and take the 10 count.

Precious points in nine of their most recent 11 starts, 15 of a possible 22 in total.

That's how a team segues itself back to the periphery of a playoff race. Or gives us the illusion, at any rate.

Going forward, the situation remains unchanged. They're still too long in the tooth, too expensive, too boxed in by tenure and no-trade clauses, too barren of prospects and draft picks. But at the very least, recent indications are that whatever transpires between now and April, they're not going to be content to simply curl up in a fetal position and wait for the inevitable end.

And that, under the circumstances, is the most anyone could ask.

Oh, the idea did seem utterly absurd only a month ago: The Flames, doing more than pay lip-service to making a play for Top 8 here in the West?! Uh huh. sure.

And 74-year-old Italian PM/serial Lothario Silvio Berlusconi has taken a vow of chastity.

Yet before your very eyes, Brent Sutter's stubborn old cusses are actually starting to catch up to a few of the horses in front of them and tonight they sail off again in hopes of surmounting the .500 barrier for the first time since Oct. 30, 84 days ago, or the 11th game of the season.

Six out of eight points gained on the just-completed four-game eastern road swing, defined by a three-goal comeback in Raleigh, N.C., and an even more astonishing four-goal surge at the Bell Centre to push the Montreal Canadiens to overtime, has at least given the perception that a legitimate charge can be made. And right now, perception is everything.

As they lined up for puck-drop at the RBC Center last week to open the trip, the Flames found themselves nine points in arrears of the post-season cut-off. When their charter touched down on home soil from Montreal in the wee small hours Tuesday, it'd been whittled to six.

A renaissance? Hardly. But give 'em their due, it's progress.

"We have to chip away now,'' lectured defenceman Mark Giordano last week. "Stay in it, stay in the race, within striking distance. Focus on getting points, wins. Games that we do lose . . . we need to get a point. That'll be big, big down the stretch. That's got to be the mindset - scrambling and getting at least a point. We've got to get something out of virtually every night from now on.''

In that, they've for the most part succeeded of late.

There's a long laundry list of why this is, in the final analysis, destined to fail. Too many of the impact forwards seem to mysteriously float in and out of consciousness too often during periods, games, even weeks, and goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff's recent maladies are hanging on like a persistent case of the sniffles. They surrender too much (11th in goals against in the West) and don't score enough (9th) to adequately compensate. There's legitimate concern that accumulative age and the strain of pushing so hard to make up acres of ground will leave them a frazzled wreck by mid-March - they plummeted out of sight, remember, during the stretch run a year ago.

What Sutter and his coaching staff have managed to do, however, is take one massive undertaking and condense it, compartmentalize it, into a series of 60-minute problems.

Fully acknowledging that the Canucks, Wings and Stars are simply too many time zones ahead to be considered plausible targets, Calgary is within 10 points of 10 others. Ten is, it must be said, a lot of points.

Still, the Flames can use four meetings with the Blues, three versus the Avs and Preds, two head-to-head with Chicago, Phoenix, San Jose, L.A. and Anaheim, along with one apiece against Columbus and, this evening, the Wild, as motivational kindling to keep the fires simmering. And people watching.

Realistically, despite the plucky resilience, there's no reason to believe playoffs are any more than a wistful pipe dream.

What is encouraging is that over the past two and half weeks, the condition of the patient has been upgraded, from virtually impossible to wildly improbable.

A pulse, however faint, has been detected.

Which sure beats the alternative.

George Johnson is the Herald's sports columnist. E-mail him at gjohnson@calgaryherald.com