Five takeaways from Calgary's bounce-back win over the Vancouver Canucks:
1) Mike Smith deserves a lot of credit for how he responded to a tough night despite less than ideal circumstances (playing vs a fresh team in a back-to-back on the road). He faced a lot of good chances -- particularly in the 1st and 3rd periods -- and didn't seem overwhelmed. Realistically, Smith has been as good as the Flames could have possibly hoped for in the early going.
2) Another game, another strong showing from Matthew Tkachuk. He picked up an assist on the dagger goal and also drew three(!) penalties while finishing tied for the team-lead in 5v5 scoring chances. He was spectacular a year ago but his game seems to have hit another level, especially with him being even more of an asset now that he's trimmed down the retaliatory penalties.
3) When GM Brad Treliving traded for Travis Hamonic to give the team an elite top-4, I think games like last night were what he envisioned. The Big Four combined to score four of the team's five goals and at least one of them was involved in all five. An elite defense can really take over games -- look at Nashville last year -- and I think that's what we saw vs Vancouver.
4) Despite the Flames' best efforts to throw the game away with a never-ending supply of bad penalties, they won! Why? Their penalty kill. They finished a perfect 7/7 and gave the Canucks absolutely nothing while down a man. It honestly felt like the Flames generated as much offense and were as likely to score as the Canucks, which is not even an exaggeration. Still, the Flames need to be more disciplined moving forward or they're going to pay sooner than later.
5) The game probably wasn't an easy one for Jaromir Jagr to play in -- it was a special teams battle, he didn't get a ton of ice, and the lines were routinely thrown into a blender -- but he still managed to make a positive impact. The Flames outshot and outscored the Canucks with Jagr on the ice and he registered his first of (hopefully) many points as a Flame.
Johnny scores, Jagr assists, big smiles all around pic.twitter.com/sEmVs1FTny
— FlamesNation (@FlamesNation) October 15, 2017