The Calgary Flames beat the Winnipeg Jets by a 4-0 score on Thursday night in Edmonton to win their Qualifying Round series. The Flames now advance to the 16 team Stanley Cup playoffs.
Here’s a quick snapshot of what happened and what it all means.

Fight night

Off the opening draw, Jets defender Nathan Beaulieu (6’2″, 200) waltzed up to Flames forward Milan Lucic (6’3″, 231) and invited him to participate in ritual combat.
Post-game, Lucic related that Beaulieu asked him to go. Lucic replied “Effin’ rights, let’s go!” and then it all happened. Beaulieu was obviously trying to spark his team… and it didn’t exactly work out that way.
While Lucic was fine with obliging Beaulieu’s request, it had an unfortunate side effect for the veteran.
I gotta say, when you wait all day for an 8:47 puck drop and then you’ve gotta sit in the box for five minutes, the legs get a little tired or stiff to start the game. But it’s nice, too, that Dubes was able to score the first goal after that fight.

Gaining experience

Two Flames made their post-season debuts in this series: Derek Forbort and Dillon Dube.
In addition to that duo, this was the first playoff series win experienced by Rasmus Andersson, Mark Giordano, Erik Gustafsson, Noah Hanifin, Mark Jankowski, Elias Lindholm, Andrew Mangiapane, Tobias Rieder, David Rittich, Derek Ryan and Matthew Tkachuk.
The Flames came into the post-season as the least experienced of the 24 teams involved in the NHL’s wacky expanded playoff scheme. While they’ll remain the least experienced team, even with adding a collective 84 games to their previous total, Giordano, Lucic and interim coach Geoff Ward noted that the experience of the series win over Winnipeg will help the group continue to progress.
“It’s a huge step in the right direction for our team,” said Lucic. Especially closing it out with our first opportunity to do that. Having a good start, getting that first goal and not looking back. You know what? We’ve talked all this time about how hard we’ve worked to prepare for this series, and I think it showed from Game 1 all the way through Game 4 here. Great first step to move on to the Sweet 16, but we’ve got to do a lot of the same things that we did well because it just gets tougher from here on out.”

Historically speaking

Dube became the 61st different player to score a playoff game-winning goal in Flames franchise history.
Cam Talbot made 31 saves, becoming the sixth different goalie to post a playoff shutout in franchise history.