It’s tough to win in the National Hockey League when your best players aren’t your best players, and that becomes even more acute when the season rolls into the final quarter and teams ramp up their play.
The Flames carried the play for most of the night but didn’t get the big goal or big save they needed to put away a Blues team that was, for the most part, hanging on.
Great performances from the third pair and the fourth line kept the Flames in it with a chance to win but ultimately the core took the night off and the Flames went down in a 6-4 contest to the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night.
The loss brings to a close a sub standard homestand that saw the Flames go 2-3-1 and tighten up the standings considerably as they head to California for a four game road trip.
The Lineup
It was a shock to the system, but not a shock to the lineup when the Flames suddenly announced the season ending surgery on the other hip of Sean Monahan. The player had been a healthy scratch twice last week, so not having Sean Monahan available isn’t really a big change to what the Flames roll out.
It does represent a great opportunity for Ryan Carpenter and potentially Adam Ruzicka going forward though.
Tonight it’s Elias Lindholm between Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau, Mikael Backlund with Andrew Mangiapane and Tyler Toffoli, Calle Jarnkrok with Dillon Dube and Blake Coleman, and then the new fourth line of Carpenter between Milan Lucic and Trevor Lewis.
The bigger impact change comes on the blueline with Oliver Kylington day to day with an injury sustained against the Kings on Thursday night. Michael Stone comes in for Kylington. So it’s Noah Hanifin with Rasmus Andersson, Stone with Chris Tanev, and the usual third pair of Nikita Zadorov with Erik Gudbranson.
Jacob Markstrom back in goal for the Flames.
Line Metrics
xGF%
Gaudreau – Lindholm – Tkachuk 63.1%
Mangiapane – Backlund – Toffoli 51.5%
Dube – Jarnkrok – Coleman 40.0%
Lucic – Carpenter – Lewis 24.9%
Hanifin – Andersson 57.9%
Stone – Tanev 61.5%
Zadorov – Gudbranson 56.7%
Goals Saved + Avg
Markstrom +10.9
Who They Playing?
The St. Louis Blues certainly wouldn’t be called a possession team, as they are ranked 23rd in the league in terms of shot splits five on five. Offensively they are ranked 26th in CF60, as they don’t put a lot of pucks on net. They’re a little better defensively, ranked 17th in CA60. When you bring quality into it things don’t get much better for St. Louis as they’re ranked 25th in xGF60, and bleed chances too as they’re ranked 28th in xGA60.
But the Blues can finish! They’re ranked 1st in five on five team shooting percentage, and 12th in team save percentage.
St. Louis has the 4th best powerplay in the National Hockey League, and the 7th best powerplay.
Honestly the Blues are built to take advantage of how the Flames are currently playing; Calgary has a tendency to carry the play but give up huge chances when they break down. The Blues are good at finishing. Could be a bad fit.
Sean Monahan
I get that we live in a world where everyone is always looking for blame in things, but man it gets old for me.
Darryl Sutter made it pretty clear that he thought the injury that is requiring surgery is recent in nature, and not something that Monahan has been dealing with all season. With that I would surmise that the Flames were as surprised as anyone when the imaging came back requiring surgery.
The player probably noticed things getting worse before, but I can’t blame him for wanting to play through it and turn his season around. Clearly he hit the wall and let the team in that he needed it looked at.
I just don’t see a lot of controversy in this.
Heaters
PDO has long been considered a measurement for luck, which to a large extent it is, but with a caveat or two.
Good teams have PDO’s over 1.0, and poor teams have PDO’s under 1.0 as a rule, but that isn’t to say all good teams are lucky and all poor teams are unlucky. More so good teams have talent so they can save pucks above the average and put pucks in the net above the norm pushing the PDO up. League wide only the Islanders sit in the top half of the league in PDO but are out of a playoff spot. At the bottom only the Kings have a poor PDO but a playoff spot.
The Flames were a 1.2 team for most of 2022, something that suggests they fit in that group of teams that can finish and stop pucks. They have the personnel to stay above the average marks.
But on this homestand that corrected and with it you get an unsuccessful home stand.
In the six games where the Flames went 2-3-1 they only went over the 1.0 mark in one game; against Edmonton. The rest were at 1.0 or below and you see the results because of it.
What am I saying? They were due for a dry spell and got it. Now they’re due for a heater again.
Play Driving
One of the big issues for the Flames right now is they’ve stopped driving the play.
Bobbled pucks, turnovers, passes off the stick, bad bounces … potentially playing too much on their heels. The top line has had their trouble but so too have the second and third line with players like Blake Coleman and Tyler Toffoli noticeably not contributing to the attack on this homestand.
It doesn’t help to have Jarnkrok out with illness as Trevor Lewis is certainly not the guy to drive a top nine trio, but even with the Swede in the lineup there are only a handful of players creating right now; Mikael Backlund, Andrew Mangiapane, and Dillon Dube.
The rest have ben off in my estimation.
Third Period
Through two periods the Flames were by far the better team, but just couldn’t finish on their chances. They had a 12-4 edge in five on five high danger chances which should mean a two or three goal lead.
The third period though was a sag again, and something we’ve seen on this homestand far too often in the final frame.
It cost them against San Jose, it cost them against Colorado, and it cost them again last night.
A tired team? With the crazy schedule in March that would certainly be plausible, but it has to get corrected if they want to sew up the Pacific.
Blues Can Finish
Said it above in the analysis of the Blues hockey team, St. Louis can finish, and that’s exactly what they did in this game.
The Blues are number one in shooting percentage and PDO league wide, so they get more saves and finish more pucks than the average team by quite a long shot.
Last night they had three goals on their first ten shots to stay in a hockey game that they had no business being in.
Top Line Buried
Another tough night for the top line which has struggled mightily on this home stand.
They scored a goal on a broken play, but parts of the top line were on the ice for four goals against with Lindholm holding that -3 honor, Tkachuk at -2 and Gaudreau at -1. Lindholm was at the bottom in terms of CF% for the team for the second straight night.
Every player and line goes through dips, but the top line for Calgary save for a great outing against Edmonton has had a rough homestand.
Special Teams
Very quiet night when it came to the officials, with each team only getting one opportunity with the man advantage.
Not a bad thing in my books, I like 5 on 5 hockey.
The Blues scored on their chance though, extending the Flames penalty killing woes in this now completed homestand, a goal that was the difference in the hockey game.
Standings and Record
A rough homestand is going to put some pressure on the standings, and we are certainly seeing that with the Flames and their hold on the top spot in the Pacific.
The LA Kings picked up a point in Edmonton, beat Calgary and then beat Winnipeg and have moved to within three points of the Flames. We’ve seen it oscillate between 5 and 8 points for a month, but three is certainly less breathing room. The Flames do have three games in hand however and a date with the Kings next week that could really tighten things up, or push them back considerably.
Counting Stats
Shots: Flames 43 Blues 25
Face Offs: Flames 37% / Blues 63%
Powerplay: Flames 0-1 / Blues 1-1
Fancy Stats
The Flames were dominant from the five minute mark to the 40 minute mark but then saw a significant sage in the third period. Overall they had the numbers to win going away, but couldn’t finish or get the save to take the game. Five on five the Flames had 63% of the shot attempts with period splits of 78%/66% and 48% respectively. In terms of five on five expected goals, the Flames had 64%, and for high danger scoring chances the Flames had 68%, with a 17-8 split.
In all situations the Flames had 62% of the shot attempts, 58% of the expected goals, and 71% of the high danger splits with an eye popping 20-8 split. How do you lose that hockey game?
Individually the Flames were led by Nikita Zadorov with 78% of the five on five shot attempts when on the ice. His partner, Erik Gudbranson was just behind at 76% Milan Lucic, Brett Ritchie and Ryan Carpenter were also in the 70s. A whole host of players were in the 60s, and many more in the 50s with the lowest guy on the totem pole being Elias Lindholm at 50% on the nose.
