You just had that sinking feeling watching the third period didn’t you?
The Flames had played a solid game through 40 minutes but came out for the third and just looked unprepared. They turned pucks over, ran around in their own zone and gave the Avalanche too much room as they started to roll over their hosts.
Ultimately the sag created a powerplay and the powerplay created a game winner in a 2-1 Avalanche victory on Tuesday night. The Flames pushed hard for the final nine minutes and threw another ten shots on Darcy Kuemper, but the games first star was able to steer it home.
Next up the L.A. Kings on Thursday night.
The Lineup
The lineup tonight features the return of Sean Monahan, something that’s become somewhat of a story over the last two games with his being healthy scratched. Gaudreau mentioning him in interviews has been pretty obvious.
The other thing to watch was the goaltending spot, as most felt Sutter would go with Dan Vladar and keep Markstrom and the Avalanche apart in the regular season. Not the case.
So up front it’s Elias Lindholm with Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau, Mikael Backlund with Andrew Mangiapane and Tyler Toffoli, Calle Jarnkrok with Dillon Dube and Blake Coleman, and a fourth line of Sean Monahan between Milan Lucic and Trevor Lewis. Ryan Carpenter comes out after a pretty solid showing against Edmonton in a bottom six role.
On the blueline the consistency continues with Noah Hanifin with Rasmus Andersson, Oliver Kylington with Chris Tanev, and Nikita Zadorov with Erik Gudbranson.
In goal as I said, Jacob Markstrom.
Line Metrics
xGF%
Gaudreau – Lindholm – Tkachuk 63.2%
Mangiapane – Backlund – Toffoli 77.8%
Dube – Jarnkrok – Coleman 40.7%
Lucic – Monahan – Lewis 44.1%
Hanifin – Andersson 58.7%
Kylington – Tanev 59.0%
Zadorov – Gudbranson 56.3%
Goals Saved + Avg
Markstrom +9.4
Who They Playing?
Well a team without Nathan MacKinnon for starters, making all team stats somewhat irrelevant.
The Avalanche are the league’s 7th ranked team in terms of five on five play driving with a CF% of 53.33%. They have the fourth best team five on five offence, and the 11th ranked team defense. Bringing quality into the conversation, the Avalanche have the 10th ranked xGF% suggesting they give more quality than they create ratably. This can be seen in their 13th ranked xGF60, and their 7th ranked xGA60.
They have the 11th ranked team five on five shooting percentage, and the 2nd best team save percentage.
The Avalanche have the 5th ranked powerplay, and the league’s 18th ranked penalty kill.
Monahan’s Night
Playing in a fourth line role you can’t expect a lot of fireworks from the guy. Would love to see it, but you don’t expect it.
But he did get noticed winning face offs and playing physical which Darryl Sutter will like.
Offensively though, he’s struggling. As I said he doesn’t get a lot of looks on a fourth line, but even handling the puck he looks really unsure.
Tkachuk & Top Line “Off”
The Flames top line must have gone off side about 11 times in this game. It started to get silly.
Matthew Tkachuk specifically seemed a little off personally as he handled the puck like a hand grenade at times, and was the culprit on many of the off sides I mentioned.
Working hard, in the right spots, but just not his night nor his linemates overall.
Avs Don’t Like Backlund
From the opening face off it seemed pretty clear that the Colorado Avalanche don’t like Mikael Backlund a whole lot.
Lots of shoving matches with the Flames player, stick work in scrums, and finishing checks.
Backlund for his part was in on a lot of it too, but I wonder what Backlund has going with the Avalanche.
Terrible Third
The Flames were really good in the first 40 minutes and especially the middle 20, but really laid an egg in the third period.
You had that feeling didn’t you? “They had better get this under control, it’s slipping”, and it did.
The tale of tape will show the Flames pretty much broke even the third period, but the truth of the proceedings was a really rough first 11 minutes and then a team that woke up when they were down a goal for the first time on the evening.
If that was the second, no problem, as they’d adjust. But there just wasn’t any runway left to turn that sag around.
Man is Kadri Unlikeable
Don’t get me wrong I’d probably love him if he played for the Flames, but the kid has to have the most punchable face in the league, or at least top five.
Whines about getting thrown out of the face off, whines about icing calls, rolling his eyes all night.
Great hockey player, and he’s shown better discipline of late, but not a likeable hockey player.
Special Teams
Avalanche, and it wasn’t close.
The game featured three powerplay goals, two of them for the Avalanche of course, but it wasn’t really that close. Calgary struggled on the powerplay and managed their strike on a two man advantage.
The visitors though got setup on all three chances and made two of them count, could have scored on all three chances.
Edge Colorado.
Standings and Record
The loss isn’t all that damaging, but it moves the Flames six game homestand to 2-2-0 with games against LA and St. Louis to come.
LA lost last night to the Kraken, so the Flames still have those two games in hand and a seven point lead.
It’s tight league wide at the top as the loss moves the Flames down to 8th overall in terms of win percentage and really close to all of Tampa, the Rangers and Toronto.
Counting Stats
Shots: Flames 45 Avalanche 30
Face Offs: Flames 68% / Avalanche 32%
Powerplay: Flames 1-5 / Avalanche 2-3
Fancy Stats
Solid first, great second and a terrible first ten minutes of the third is the game story for the Flames in a 2-1 setback. Five on five the Flames had 53% of the shot attempts with period splits of 62%/52% and 47% respectively. In terms of five on five expected goals, the Flames had 48%, and for high danger scoring chances the Flames had 64%, with a 7-4 split.
In all situations the Flames had 59% of the shot attempts, 60% of the expected goals, and 68% of the high danger splits. The Flames had two extra powerplays so they drove their stats up, but nothing hides the fact that the Flames got Kuempered.
Individually the Flames were led by Nikita Zadorov with 70% of the five on five shot attempts when on the ice. Blake Coleman and Dillon Dube were just a hair back at 69%. Calle Jarnkrok and Erik Gudbranson were also in the 60s. Noah Hanifin was at the bottom of the pile with a 40% night.
