Calgary Puck

The Flames are 2-0-0 to start a season? Seriously?

Facts are facts, the Flames build off their opening night win against the Colorado Avalanche with a 4-3 victory in Edmonton Saturday night.

The Flames jumped out to a 4-1 first period lead, only to see that lead cut to 4-3. Wouldn’t say the Flames hung on though, as they out shot the Oilers 42-29 as the two teams ground out a tight finish.

Dan Vladar got the surprise start for the Flames and pulled off the victory in his first start in the Battle of Alberta.

Next up … the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday night.

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You can’t win 80 games if you don’t win the first one.

That quote from Kent Nilsson when the Flames beat the Vancouver Canucks in Vancouver to start a season 40 or so years ago.

Now it’s 82 games, but the quote still fits, especially for a team that has grown accustomed to dropping the first game on the slate each and every year in the past dozen seasons.

A ten game win streak is a tough feat, but so too is a ten game losing streak. Generally things even out, but in this case it seemed like a badge of honour for the Flames to drop the first game over every season.

Tonight they surrendered the first goal, but then poured it on for the first half of the game and built a comfortable 5-1 lead before letting the Avalanche crawl back into it and make it a 5-3 final.

The 1-0-0 Flames travel to Edmonton to take on the Oilers on Saturday night.

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In the end they just weren’t good enough.

Jacob Markstrom didn’t make enough saves.

The Flames skill players didn’t produce enough to win a series.

Team defense was leaky.

And the opposition was very very good, lets face it. The Oilers finished when they got chances, and were able to play better team defense than many expected in bottling up the Calgary Flames.

Still the game was tied in the third period at 4-4 with what looked like a Blake Coleman go ahead goal potentially pushing the series to a game six. He put the puck in with his skate, the play was reviewed and waived off. As a Flame fan you know the history and the misery; we all knew that was the game right there.

The Oilers win the series 4-1 with a 5-4 overtime victory and will move on to play the winner of the St. Louis/Colorado series.

The Flames move on to a very interesting off season.

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Lots of positives to take away from that one … but not the result.

The Flames played a great road game, overcame a painful Jacob Markstrom first minute turnover empty net goal, and then rebounded with their goaltender to turn a 3-0 deficit into a 3-3 third period tie before giving up a late third period goal and dropping a 5-3 contest to the Edmonton Oilers.

Darryl Sutter was pretty adamant in his post game comments that his team wasn’t going to lie down and we will see when the focus shifts back to Calgary for game five on Thursday night.

The game plan is set, as it pretty much was spot on tonight but they didn’t get the finish they needed to tie the series.

Lets see what they’re made of.

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Not much you can take from a game like that.

The Flames had done a good job of winning the five on five portion of the first two games of the series, but struggled when it came to the Oilers powerplay or when the two teams were playing four on four.

Last night the Oilers befuddled the Flames at their own game, scoring four straight five on five goals in the second period, after having a huge territorial advantage in the first period as well, on the way to a convincing 4-1 victory on Sunday night.

The series now sits with Edmonton in the driver seat, up 2-1 and looking to take a stranglehold on Tuesday night in Edmonton.

For the Flames the story continues to be the loss of Chris Tanev, and how his absence has completely downgraded the team’s defense core rendering the five surviving members a shadow of their former selves.

I doubt Tanev is coming back, so they’ll have to look for answers internally.

Gut check time.

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