The Calgary Flames lost by a 5-3 score to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday evening to kick off the 2019-20 season. Here are selected reactions from the post-game coverage.

So, uh, the Flames weren’t great in the opening part of the game. Part of that was a bit of rust. Part of that was them taking a bunch of penalties and the game turning into each side alternating on special teams. Flames head coach Bill Peters noted that it was tough to get some flow in the game early on.

“It’s impossible, right?” said Peters. “We took one first shift and then we took three in the first. So, you’re either on the power play or the penalty kill and it makes it tough to get any flow to the game.”

Milan Lucic’s first outing as a Flame was… fine. He neither helped nor hurt the team, in the sense that he threw some hits and got involved in scrums. His biggest scoresheet impact was a skirmish with Nikita Zadorov late in the second period after Zadorov crunched the diminutive Austin Czarnik along the boards.

Peters didn’t have an issue with Lucic’s decision to deter the Avalanche from further hits on their smaller guys.

“What’d they get? Two, five and a 10 and five and a two?” pondered Peters. “Guy takes a run… There wasn’t a penalty until Looch went in there, their arms weren’t up so that was interesting. It’s good to stick up for each other, and it didn’t put us short, so it’s no problem.”

The big takeaway from the post-game player videos was a general sense of disappointment. They took too many penalties. Their penalty kill allowed two goals, with another scored right after a penalty expired.

Sure, most teams don’t have a power play that includes Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Gabriel Landeskog and Cale Makar. But hopefully the loss serves as an early wake-up call to avoid taking so many dang penalties.