Five observations from Calgary vs Colorado
1. The Flames crumbled Given the circumstances (a road back-to-back), I thought the Flames started the game pretty well. The ice wasn't tilted by any means but they held their own in the chance department and were quite opportunistic scoring a pair of goals to jump out to a relatively early 2-0 lead. Things were good.
Unfortunately, that didn't last long.
Matthew Tkachuk took being Matthew Tkachuk a little too far and decided he was going to lay on Mikko Rantanen and give him the business for 15 seconds after flattening him. It resulted in a penalty, which Colorado of course converted on.
Just over a minute later Nikita Zadorov tied things up and suddenly the Avalanche were wide awake.
Even though it was a 2-2 game at that point, you kind of knew it was over. We've seen this movie too many times from the Flames this season.
They play pretty well, get a lead, then fall asleep at the wheel. They take a million penalties, make dumb mistakes, and shoot themselves in the foot over and over.
Last night they did so by parading to the box against an Avalanche team that entered play 4th in power play goals. Though the Avs only capitalized once (on their opening goal), all that time up a man forced key Flames players to waste a lot of energy trying to kill penalties off and, obviously, made it difficult on them to come from behind. Despite what Mikael Backlund will have you believe, it's generally pretty hard to score while playing shorthanded.
If the Flames don't cut this crap out of their game – and fast – they're going to miss the playoffs, which is pretty unacceptable given some of the fantastic seasons key players have given them.
2. David Rittich continued to struggle The loss was by no means all on Rittich. I'm confident the Flames would have lost that game even with Mike Smith between the pipes given some of the blown coverages and the team's inability to stay out of the box. In saying that, you need your goaltender to step up when the team is falling apart and Rittich didn't do that. He allowed four goals on 33 shots, marking the fifth time in six games he's posted a sub .910 save percentage.
I don't know if he lost his confidence, is falling back down to earth, or it's a combination of the two, but suddenly goaltending is finding its way back onto the Flames' list of problems.
3. The penalty kill was excellent As little as the Flames deserved it, their penalty killing gave them a chance to hang around in the game.
They were shorthanded seven times for a total of almost 11 minutes. In that time, they gave up as many goals (1) and high-danger chances (1) as they generated.
That's impressive vs any team, let alone one featuring a Hart Trophy candidate.
4. The bottom-6 was useless On paper, the Flames dressed one of the worst bottom-6 groupings you will see and the results were exactly what you'd expect.
Mark Jankowski, Garnet Hathaway, Troy Brouwer, Chris Stewart, Matt Stajan, and Tanner Glass combined for a grand total of one scoring chance. One.
Nick Shore won't solve the problem but perhaps getting him into the lineup, and dropping Sam Bennett down when Michael Ferland returns, will make the bottom-6 somewhat competent.
5. The power play had an off night The Flames ran into extra man opportunities at some key times – like right after the Avs tied the game at 2 – and they couldn't make anything happen. They went 0/5, generated just three scoring chances, and completely erased an opportunity by taking a quick penalty. Naturally, that cost them as Colorado scored during 4v4 play.
The power play has been good of late but that certainly wasn't the case last night.
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