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The Calgary Flames opened their five game road trip in Anaheim last night with a, not so surprising, 3-2 loss. The Flames have now extended their losing record in Anaheim to 17 consecutive games with their last win coming in January of 2004. Not a record they care to comment on, really.
With respect to last night’s game, I felt that the team played well for the most part. Aside from a few gaffes made and playing a much stronger Ducks team, Calgary held their own for a good portion of the game and continued to show their work ethic.
Getting off to a rough start during the game, the Flames would give up the first goal nice and early when Dustin Penner put one past Joey MacDonald after receiving a nice pass from Ryan Getzlaf.
The Ducks would add a second goal courtesy of Kyle Palmeiri who was able to get the puck off his stick in a hurry and make it 2-0 for the home team. Late in the first period, Flames forward Lee Stempniak would steal the puck and spring himself on a breakaway which led to a shorthanded goal and brought the lead down to just one goal.
At this point in the game I didn’t feel that either team really dominated as they both seemed rather sluggish to me. The shots were pretty even, though Calgary had few decent scoring chances. The 2nd period would only see one goal from none other than Teemu Selanne who was sprung on a breakaway of his own and reinstated the Ducks two goal lead. As I mentioned last night over twitter, there aren’t too many goalies who will stop Selanne on a break like that…the man has talent.
Despite only showing one goal through 20 minutes of play, the second period provided many opportunities to the visiting team who were awarded with three power-plays but could do nothing with them.
Outside of Stempniak’s goal, the Flames would not offer much in terms of offense until the third period when they really started to pick things up. After a total of 18 shots between the two first periods, Calgary would step it up in the third with a total of 17 shots as they attempted to throw everything at Anaheim tender Viktor Fasth.
With persistence often comes reward as the Flames would execute with a power-play goal from Juri Hudler, marking his 100th NHL goal of his career. Last night would also extend Hudler to sixth straight games with a point.
Although the team worked hard in the third period and had a few chances, they could not secure the tying goal and would walk away with their first defeat in regulation.
“You’ve got to give credit, their best players make plays when you give them chances, but we gave them a couple goals we feel shouldn’t happen” said Giordano. “Other than that, we didn’t play that bad of a game. On the road, we were down one goal with 15 minutes left and had plenty of chances. We just couldn’t find the way to get the tying goal.”
As no surprise to anyone, last night’s disappointing player of the game for me was Chris Butler who has not looked good over the last couple of games. With young kids starting to step up and look to take over roster spots, Butler had better start working on and refining his game if he plans on being a member of the Flames for much longer.
With his first taste of what their conference truly has to offer with respect to competition, Monahan played okay. He didn’t have a great game, but overall he didn’t look too far out of place either. He continues to have areas in which he could use improvements, but this is to be expected and they won’t improve until he gets more experience. Three games remain for the rookie before management needs to make the big decision...time is ticking!
"Obviously I want to close the road trip out with the team, but that's not something I think about," said Monahan. "I just come to the rink and try to do my job every day.
"I'm here to do my job and my part and they're going to make the decision whenever they want to. We'll see what happens."
With last night being the Flames first loss in regulation, I wholeheartedly expect Karri Ramo to get the start Saturday night against the Sharks. While not the greatest time to start Ramo who has played but one regular season game to date, Calgary needs to get him out there and give him the chance to play a few back to back games himself.
That said, I wouldn’t expect a solid performance from him in San Jose given his playing time so far, but he should come out and battle as he tries to secure that starting position.
That’s all for today folks, thanks for reading!
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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