1) Don't look now but the Calgary Flames are *finally* starting to play good defensive hockey. A night after silencing a Toronto team that led the league in goals entering the contest, the Flames did the same against Buffalo while holding them to just 29 shots in almost 63 minutes of hockey. More importantly, the Flames tied a season-low conceding 11 high-danger chances. The Sabres aren't exactly overflowing with high-end offensive players but they've been playing quality hockey of late. For the Flames to limit their chances like that in the latter half of a road back-to-back is impressive. Some things need to get cleaned up – for example, the Flames had a couple blue line turnovers result in quality looks – but Tuesday night was a step in the right direction.
2) David Rittich put together another quality performance under tough circumstances. It's not that the Sabres had an abundance of high-end chances, it's that he had to be nearly perfect for the Flames to have a shot at winning. Rittich made a few Grade A saves to keep the game within one. If any of them found the back of the net, the Flames probably leave the ice empty-handed. Instead, they picked up another two points and catapulted themselves into a tie with San Jose for 1st in the Pacific Division. I was somewhat skeptical Rittich could be the quality backup the Flames need him to be behind Mike Smith. So far he's been just that stopping 93.9% of the shots faced through six appearances.
3) Earlier in the year the Johnny Gaudreau - Sean Monahan - Elias Lindholm line was scoring but not playing particularly well. They were really shaky defensively and consistently came up on the wrong end of the shot/chance battle. That hasn't been the case of late.
Over the last couple games, the Flames have controlled better than 60% of the 5v5 shot attempts with that trio on the ice. In terms of raw offense, they've been in on four of the team's five goals while accounting for 23 of 58 chances (40%) and 11 of 21 high-danger looks (52.3%). It's a small sample size, of course, but this is the dominance the Flames expected when they put Lindholm on the top unit.
Now they just need key secondary scorers (James Neal and Mikael Backlund come to mind) to convert on some of the many chances they've created.
Numbers via NaturalStatTrick.com and Corsica.Hockey. Recent posts: On Bennett's improved play, drawing penalties, and Brodie's PK usage