With little to no room for error, Calgary headed into GM Place to take on the division leading Vancouver Canucks hoping to extend the teams winning streak to 5 straight. But the Canucks had much different plans in mind. Coming off of one of their best performances of the season the night before, the Canucks were a team brimming with confidence, so the question was who wanted it more?
On The Line
Everything is on the line in every single game for the remainder of the season, so you simply must win if you’re the Flames.
The Flow
This one started out ugly as sin for the Flames. It was as if the team was still on daylight savings time because they slept through the first period surrendering three goals on twenty shots to (spoiler alert) lose the game right then and there. It all started when the Sedin’s and Samuelsson came in on Kiprusoff on an odd man rush that Kiprusoff made a terrific save, but ended up wildly out of position which was easily exploited to put the Canucks up by one. Follow that up with a laser beam shot from Kesler that no one could have stopped and top it all off with a two man advantage power-play goal and the Flames were toast.
If you stopped reading just now, or that sums up your Flames viewing experience for the night, well there is still some good news to be heard. The second period was a much better effort from the Flames. It saw Vesa Toskala draw in to take over from Kiprusoff and that signaled a change for the Flames. They carried the play throughout the second period, at one point leading in shots 8-1 and finishing the frame with the better of the scoring chances, but no goals to speak of.
The third was something else. Sadly the Flames were only able to muster one goal against, but what they did in this period and the previous one likely spells good news for tomorrow night. Robyn Regehr scored his second of the season after the Flames hemmed the Canucks in for a good solid shift and Regehr let fly a wrister while Hagman and Glencross drifted across the net providing a screen. But the most welcome stat of the night? Well friends, that would be the shots on goal column in the third: 11-0 Calgary.
Three Stars
1. Roberto Luongo: The Canucks goaltender stood tall when his team was on the ropes.
2. Niklas Hagman: Provided a lot of jump in the Flames lineup and should have had a goal or two for his efforts.
3. Henrik Sedin: Sedin exploited Miikka Kiprusoff the way that he’s always done leading the team to victory.
Big Save
With the Flames looking to build on a solid start to the second period and look forward to more chance for success in an epic tilt against the Red Wings tomorrow night, Vesa Toskala likely saved the fragile mental state of the Flames with a breakaway save halfway through the second period.
Big Hit
Mark Giordano made a board advertisement out of Alexandre Burrows in the second period with a hit that I’m surprised Burrows got up from, not just because he might have faked an injury, but because it was a heavy hit.
The Goat
This is hard to nail down. It wasn’t really Kiprusoff’s fault that the first period turned out the way that it did, but this Flames team was clearly not prepared to start the game. If it had been an hour later, maybe this is a different story, so can we blame daylight savings?
Mr. Clutch
Possibly the biggest component of the Dion Phaneuf trade was the defensive prowess of Ian White’s mustache. It was very strange to see the number 3 effectively strip the puck from a Sedin twin.
Odds and Ends
There could be an entire blog posting just on how awesome Ian White’s mustache is, and while it’s clear that the man is simply a symbiotic host for the higher being of said mustache, the fact that the mustache has such good hockey sense is really quite amazing. There was a key moment in the second period that I hope the coaching staff saves in video forever as how to defend the Sedin twins and that was Ian White’s mustache cutting off time and space and using the stick to poke the puck off of both Daniel and Henrik Sedin. Plus it has a really great shot of Ian White’s mustache.
The result sucks, but let’s be honest, no one expected the Flames to win the remainder of their games without some stumbles. What is most concerning is how quickly the team can seem to fall apart when things start to go awry with Kiprusoff in net. Most unexpected was how the team did a complete about face when Vesa Toskala went in net. Wasn’t he supposed to suck? This game is full of a lot of challenges to comprehend. First, what caused the lackluster start to the contest, and what changed, other than the goaltender, to make things turn around.
Who do you go with in some of those big games that you need your number one to win, but they’re against teams who he struggles against? Case and point is Colorado and Chicago: Kiprusoff has struggled mightily against them, so is it worth it to go a different route and throw in Toskala? Against Chicago, I say definitely. That team is so far inside Kiprusoff’s head it’s scary, and what’s the worst thing that happens; the expected?
Next Up
Calgary heads home in the latest of the biggest game of the season against the Detroit Red Wings. Game time is 7:30 PM and you can catch the action on TSN.
Lines:
Bourque – Stajan – Iginla
Higgins – Langkow – Kotalik
Hagman – Conroy – Moss
Nystrom – Mayers – Glencross
Regehr – White
Giordano – Sarich
Bouwmeester – Staios
Kiprusoff/Toskala
