Calgary Puck

Are the Flames finding their Darryl Sutter spirit animal too late?

After a solid 5-0 pasting of the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night, the Flames extended their win streak by besting David Rittich and the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night with a 3-2 overtime victory.

And they get style points too.

Limiting the Leafs to less than 30 shots, keeping Auston Matthew quiet, and carrying the play (in their own way where they dominate without doing a whole lot) along the way to a pretty solid victory.

Next up is back to back games against Montreal which will likely mean the season. The math doesn’t look good anyway but it could be more interesting or downright ugly by Friday night.

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Halleluiah!

After two plus years of fans pleading with the team to break up Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan, Darryl Sutter did exactly that in a 5-0 win over the rival Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night.

Sean Monahan, working with Andrew Mangiapane and Dillon Dube, had the best line going on the night and scored a five on five goal to break up a 13 game goalless drought.

For his part Johnny Gaudreau wasn’t as effective in overall play metrics, but had a goal and an assist himself as the Flames snapped a four game losing streak and kept their playoff hopes alive with the Canadiens losing their third straight.

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The Find A Way Flames was quite a thing in the 2014-15 season as Bob Hartley led an exciting and lets face it fortuitous group to many a come back in a story book season that saw them win many a game that they likely shouldn’t.

This season the Flames have embraced that moniker again, but this time they are finding a way to lose games, which was once again the case against Toronto in blowing a 2-1 lead before dropping a 4-2 contest in Calgary on Easter Sunday.

Just like the game on Friday in Edmonton the Flames played reasonably well, could or should have had a better result but found a way to come up empty.

The loss moves the team to 1-7-0 in their last eight as their season, while not mathematically over, is certainly getting into the danger of being eliminated in terms of probability.

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So is that the season?

I mean most of us had already pretty much written it off, but now with the Flames three games under .500 and chasing two teams that just keep on winning the task looks pretty difficult.

With 18 games to go the Flames likely can only afford a loss or two max, and that’s with some head on head success to balance the books.

Tonight was a solid game though, the Flames brought the best game we’ve seen in a few and could easily have won this one in regulation despite a bit of a shaky start.

In the end it was an Edmonton powerplay and a game winner from the generational player that sealed their fate.

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When the Flames started their Ontario road trip with a split in Toronto, the road map to save the season seemed pretty simple; win both in Ottawa and get back into it.

Yeah that didn’t happen.

The Flames instead scored two goals in two games and dropped both Ottawa encounters in regulation time pretty much lynching their season.

So when they returned to home ice to host the Jets for three straight they honestly needed to sweep the set in order to right the wrong of the mistakes made in Ottawa.

Tonight despite a spirited effort, the Flames dropped their second of three to the Jets, leaving very little wiggle room.

The Flames scored first, had a decent effort and were on the wrong side of two pivotal calls, but that’s what you get when you air mail a month of your schedule … very little wiggle room.

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