The Flames opened the season with two dominant performances, at least territorially but only one win. Tonight they found a win despite relying pretty heavily on their goaltender. I guess these things even out over the course of a season.
The Flames also leaned on a red hot powerplay, as their top unit scored two more times tonight to pace the team to a big road win in a tough barn in Nashville.
Next up the Flames travel to St. Louis to take on the Blues on Thursday night and it’s probably a good thing that Mike Smith is scheduled to get that night off. Lord knows he stopped enough pucks for two starts in picking up his second win of the season tonight.
Smith Back In the Groove
Coming in Mike Smith simply had to be better.
The team, however also had to tighten up, something they clearly didn’t do in allowing 43 shots to the Predators tonight.
Coming in the Flames were huddled with the Oilers and Penguins for the worst expected save percentage in the league at around .900. That stats get parried somewhat with the fact the team was the fourth best in shots allowed per game, suggesting that at least the quantity was low if the quality was high. The Predators likely skewed those stats considerably.
To make a point of how early it is in a season; Smith came in with a .810 save percentage allowing 8 goals on 42 shots. Tonight with 43 consecutive saves his save percentage jumps to .906.
Very good sign for the Flames if they can get goaltending closer to Smith’s work for the first half of last season, and less like how he closed things out after the injury.
Monahan Torrid Pace
The Six Million Dollar Man has been rebuilt with four surgeries in the off season. When many found out that he scored 31 goals last year with a bum wrist that hampered his shot the thought progressed to how it could be likely the talented center may find the net 40 times this winter.
With four goals in three games he’s certainly doing nothing to quiet those predictions. I won’t get into silly pace mathematics this early, but Monahan has notoriously been somewhat of a slow starter (his rookie season the exception) but 6-10 in October would go a long way to breaking his career mark and chugging towards 40.
Powerplay Continues To Roll
The Flames first powerplay was very reminiscent of the first Vancouver game. They couldn’t penetrate the Predator’s zone whatsoever, pretty much burning two minutes off the clock themselves. The second time out it looked to be a repeat until Johnny Gaudreau toe dragged through the middle and then set up Elias Lindholm with his third of the season on a beautiful play.
In the second the unit struck again when Monahan collected a Matt Tkachuk rebound and beat Rinne to make it 2-0 Calgary.
The 2/4 night moves the Flames man advantage group to 29.4% on the season, a far cry from the 0% and bad press after game one.
Maybe this Geoff Ward fella knows what he’s doing?
Change Ups Provide Third Line
Though they didn’t put up good metrics, the third line was noticeable tonight when they did get out of their own zone as Sam Bennett, Dillon Dube and James Neal were able to create, giving the Flames a third wave of offence for the first time this season.
Bennett was great off the half wall and Dube was good with his speed, Neal chipping pucks to open areas and keeping shifts moving.
It wasn’t pretty, and it didn’t rival the top two lines, but it was a start.
Bennett Robbed
Very odd call in the second period when it looked like Bennett scored his first of the season on a Sean Monahan rebound.
The goal was waved due to the Predators having too many men on the ice and play whistled dead. Replays showed the Predators never touching the puck as Bennett picked up the rebound, took the puck around Rinne’s pad and put it in the net.
Luckily the Flames quickly scored on the ensuing powerplay, the referees avoiding that being a swing moment in what was at the time a very close game.
Have to feel bad for Bennett though.
Fancy Stats
Just like the Vancouver games featured nothing but Calgary players with gaudy possession numbers, tonight’s game was a list of Flame’s players that were seemingly owned.
The Predators had 60% of the shot attempts, though score effects would have a dampening effect on the numbers. Calgary had the first period with 56%, but the Predators had 65% and 68% in the next two periods to run away with it.
In terms of scoring chances the Predators had 66%, and in high danger chances they enjoyed 67% of the 18 total high danger chances surrendered.
Only four Calgary players finished above water, basically the whole second line in the mid 50%s, and Anthony Peluso the runaway winner for Mr. Corsi with 71% (5-2) on only five minutes of ice time.
The only players with a truly rough night in high danger splits was the Noah Hanifin / Michael Stone pairing that were 2-8 on the night.
Young Pairing
I thought the young pairing of Jusso Valimaki and Rasmus Andersson had a pretty solid evening overall.
Like much of the team their underlying numbers were garbage, and for sure they had the odd tough shift, but for the most part they handled themselves well given the difficulty of opposition.
Offensively they certainly added to the game with their ability to get the puck up the ice and pinch up the wall to keep momentum shifts going.
