What a game!
You have to forgive Calgary fans for expecting a little bit of a correction when a season just continues to roll on with success; we’re just not that used to it.
So when a top team, the Cup Champs, come into town you kind of hold your breath and hope for the best, while secretly expecting the worst.
Instead the Flames play the Lightning tight through 39 minutes on the strength of both goaltenders before scoring two late second period goals before cruising to a huge 4-1 victory.
Johnny Gaudreau picks up the hat trick with two bank shots to move to 26 goals on the season.
This team is for real.
The Lineup
The tinkering with the bottom nine forwards continues as Darryl Sutter looks to find a combination to spark offence while not creating a trio that gets worked five on five. Against Washington the fourth line of Sean Monahan, Milan Lucic and Trevor Lewis just didn’t have the foot speed to compete, gave up two key second period goals and saw a lot less ice.
Tonight he goes back to the look that we saw against Edmonton, or at least … that’s the indication.
So Elias Lindholm between Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk, Mikael Backlund between Blake Coleman and Trevor Lewis, Adam Ruzicka with Andrew Mangiapane and Tyler Toffoli, and the fourth line has Monahan between Lucic and Dillon Dube to give them a little more speed.
No change to the defenseman; Noah Hanifin with Rasmus Andersson, Oliver Kylington with Chris Tanev, and Nikita Zadorov with Erik Gudbranson.
In goal, the Flames go back to Jacob Markstrom.
Line Metrics
xGF%
Gaudreau – Lindholm – Tkachuk 62.7%
Lewis – Backlund – Coleman 57.1%
Mangiapane – Ruzicka – Toffoli 59.0%
Lucic – Monahan – Dube 57.1%
Hanifin – Andersson 58.3%
Kylington – Tanev 58.1%
Zadorov – Gudbranson 57.8%
Goals Saved + Avg
Markstrom +9.5
Who They Playing?
The two time defending Stanley Cup Champions, that’s who!
The Lightning however, haven’t been all that top tier when it comes to underlying numbers this year. Their CF% is middling at 12th overall with the 21st ranked five on five offence in shot metrics, and the 6th best prevention squad. With their skill level they have better expected goal splits, sitting at 7th overall, with the second best xGA60 number five on five in hockey.
Don’t give them much or else, as they have the 2nd best five on five team shooting percentage and the 12th best team save percentage.
Their powerplay hasn’t hit on all cylinders, sitting 16th overall, and their penalty kill is ranked 17th.
Goalie Battle
Through 39 minutes that was pretty much the best goalie battle I’ve seen this season.
Jacob Markstrom for the longest time was holding on to a shut out in a tight 1-0 game, and was being met at the other end with equally outstanding goaltending from Andrei Vasilevsky.
Calgary scores two late goals in the second, and then another in the third, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that we got to see two likely Vezina finalists go toe to toe all night.
Johnny Bank Shot
Hat trick!
Two identical off the back bank shot goals … one in the first period, and another late in the second, and then a the hat trick off an elite pass from Elias Lindholm pass from behind the net after Rasmus Andersson made a great play to keep the play alive and put the puck deep.
Gaudreau now has 26 goals on the season and has a shot at 40 if he continues to roll.
His 77 points in 57 games make it more than likely that he bests his all time high of 99 points in a season.
Great to see the garbage can completely full of hats as well.
Megan Mickelson
She’s strong isn’t she?
More poise than Troy Brouwer by a long shot, and sadly Cory Sarich as well (though I’ll add again if you hear Sarich at an event he’s a different guy).
She was smooth in breaking down the Gaudreau bank shots, and Jacob Markstrom the leader through the telecast.
She really turned her Olympic gig into an opportunity.
The Jacob
You need goaltending like that to win, if you don’t have it against a team like Tampa the gap is too wide. Tonight Markstrom was more than ready to even the scales and give his team a chance to win.
The Flames have been great this year, but if you’re not consistently getting that expected save great teams can look pretty average pretty quickly.
Tonight he was money through the first two periods when the game could have gone either way.
In the third the Flames didn’t give up much and helped their goaltender to a big win.
Fourth Line Better
Adding a little foot speed to that fourth line made a huge difference.
Trevor Lewis is in the right spot pretty much all the time, but he doesn’t have the boots nor the hands to help out two other struggling players.
Adding Dillon Dube let Lucic and Monahan break the puck out with a quick option, and with that they were able to generate zone time, and some solid scoring chances.
The Flames really could use one more bottom six forward. He doesn’t have to be high octane, but just a guy that can play the 200 with authority.
Monahan’s A Killer!
The Sean Monahan hit on Steven Stamkos might have been a first for Calgary fans.
Have we ever seen Sean Monahan hunted down as a goon before in his Calgary tenure? I don’t think so.
Monahan gets jumped by Stamkos and punched in the mush for his take down a few minutes earlier.
Good to see Monahan using his size either way, if you’re not going to have a productive offensive season you need to adapt and bring other parts of your game.
Special Teams
The Flames go 1/5 on the powerplay and kill all three Tampa powerplays including a four minute call against Nikita Zadorov at the end of the first period.
The Flames penalty kill was amazing tonight, all kinds of pressure on the Bolts, leaving their impact players with little time and space.
Simply amazing to see how they’ve owned the Saddledome when down a man in the last two plus months.
Standings and Record
That’s a really big win for the Flames.
They get the win against Edmonton to push a rival down the standings, trip up against Washington, but then beat the Stanley Cup champs to avoid that two game losing streak, or even a two games without a point, getting two.
The Flames move up six points on the Kings with a game in hand, and almost incredibly nine points up on the Knights with two games in hand as Vegas continues to struggle dropping a game in Buffalo tonight.
The Oilers are the 9th place team in the West and sit 11 points back, Calgary having a game in hand.
Counting Stats
Shots: Flames 32 Bolts 31
Face Offs: Flames 50% / Bolts 50%
Powerplay: Flames 1-5 / Bolts 0-3
Fancy Stats
The final score was 4-1, but this was a tough slogging tight hockey team between to very good hockey teams. Five on five the Flames had 49% of the shot attempts with period splits of 52%/51% and 40% respectively. In terms of five on five expected goals, the Flames had 47%, and for high danger scoring chances the Flames had 48%, with a 10-11 split.
In all situations the Flames had 50% of the shot attempts, 50% of the expected goals, and 48% of the high danger splits.
The Flames were lead individually by Matthew Tkachuk who had 70% of the five on five shot attempts when he was on the ice. Four players had numbers in the 60s including; Andrew Mangiapane, Erik Gudbranson, Johnny Gaudreau and Nikita Zadorov. Five players finished under 40% … Sean Monahan, Milan Lucic, Trevor Lewis, Blake Coleman and Noah Hanifin.
