Avalanche 5, Flames 2 post-game embers: Burn it all

It started off well and then turned into a disaster impossible to recover from. Is that like, a summation of the Flames’ season as a whole? Or did that not really start off as well.

You know what, good for Johnny Gaudreau.

Taking a skate to the neck is always going to be a totally fluke accident, harrowing as it may be. Taking a stick blade to the neck – or at least really dang close to it – is not. Any time something like that comes anywhere near your neck or head area you’re probably going to flinch, even if you hadn’t just suffered a cut to the exact same area.

So. In what world was that embellishment? Gaudreau wasn’t trying to sell anything, and you can tell by the fact he continued with the play. He reacted, and then he went back to entering the zone to try to score a goal because his team was down by two and that was the most important thing to accomplish. What an outrageously stupid call, and I do not blame him one bit for going off on the officials for it, even if it got him kicked out of the game. There needs to be some accountability and it’s just never going to come, so gotta let off steam one way or another.

That, and I’d probably be pretty pissed about taking a stick to the neck, regardless of whether or not the officials ruled in my favour to begin with. Just a bad combination of things all around.

The way things were going, would Gaudreau’s presence have helped the Flames get another two goals? Probably not, that game was over once Matt Nieto scored in the final two minutes of the second. But good god, in a season full of horrible officiating calls – mostly of the goaltender interference variety – that one was up there. Guy reacts to taking a weapon near a sensitive part of the body that’s already been hurt by continuing to play and ultimately gets tossed out of the game for it. What nonsense.

Here’s the thing to remember: the Flames are currently playing with their starting AHL tandem. In the NHL.

David Rittich and Jon Gillies are decent enough prospects, you can tell by the fact that they’ve convincingly won a number of games and aren’t getting totally destroyed out there. But they’re also still prospects who will be susceptible to bad goals against and, well. Last night, Rittich was a victim. The Avalanche had eight scoring chances for in the second period, four high-danger corsi events, and four goals went in; you do the math.

It’s been two weeks since Rittich’s heroics got the Flames a win against Nashville. Since then, it’s been three regulation losses and an unfortunate overtime loss in which he still played well. Inconsistency is the name of the game, but it’s not particularly surprising; again, AHL tandem.

Would the Flames have won the game with Mike Smith in net? Maybe. Smith was also on pace to start over 70 games before he went down with an injury, and he’s also 35 years old – he turns 36 later this month – so. It’s entirely possible that, for a season in which the Flames started with too many goalies, they still weren’t just good enough, even with one of them putting up his best season in six years.

At the very least, Rittich and Gillies are both getting solid audition time for next season down this stretch. Because it’s probably time to start thinking about next season.

As a rookie, Matthew Tkachuk registered 105 penalty minutes, which is maybe a little too much. This season, he’s down to 61, with six new fresh, shiny penalty minutes taken last night, mostly stupidly. He’s also had two suspensions this year, but both were for very minor, even more stupid things; he seems to have calmed down on that, but evidently, there’s been a bit of acting up lately.

In the past five games, Tkachuk has collected 16 penalty minutes. Before that, he went nine games without so much as a call against him. There was a fight mixed in there, remove that – since fights are a whole other beast than minors – and Tkachuk went 15 straight games without a single call against him.

With 43 penalties drawn, Tkachuk leads the entire NHL in forcing other teams to drop a man. With 18 minors taken, you’re still getting the bang for your buck with him. It was just not a great night – and a shame at that, considering his assist and how well his line started off.

Seven powerplay opportunities for the Avalanche. Five for the Flames. Yikes. It balanced out; the Avs scored a powerplay goal, but Mikael Backlund also got his first shorthanded goal of the year, so not much harm, not much foul there. He now leads the Flames with three shorthanded points, and is tied for seventh league-wide.

(Just a general musing here, but in looking at the shorthanded point league leaders, funny to see noted skilled, smaller player Brayden Point has four. Why not send guys like him on the penalty kill if they can create something, as opposed to bigger, “well he’s on the team but doesn’t score a lot but he’s gotta be good for something” guys?)

The Flames are often at their best when the game is played at five-on-five. That did not happen much over this road trip. And as much as their powerplay may have been improving, it’s still in the bottom 10 of the league. (Their penalty kill is up to a surprising 80.2%, 16th, so at least there’s that at the moment.)

The Flames put themselves in a bind. What they really needed was another top six, or at least top nine, forward, but they didn’t have the assets to spend on one. And the way this season has been going, why buy? It’s been largely not great as a whole.

But uh, Tanner Glass dressed, which, why. Matt Stajan’s probably on his last legs. Chris Stewart was a waiver wire pickup. Garnet Hathaway should be playing on the fourth line, tops. Troy Brouwer is never going to live up to his contract. And it’s not as though Curtis Lazar would have made that much of a difference.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If Jaromir Jagr had been signed earlier maybe he gives the Flames a formidable third line. If Kris Versteeg doesn’t get hurt for months on end then he helps the forward depth. Micheal Ferland would probably help right about now, as well. But injuries are going to happen, mistakes are going to be made, and the Flames have plenty of bodies, but none good enough to overcome this. The bottom six is basically Mark Jankowski and friends right now, and there’s only so much one rookie can do.

The good news is it’s far more difficult to acquire high end players than it is depth, and the Flames have done a pretty decent job of the former. But chucking assets at replacement-level bodies isn’t going to solve the latter. Josh Jooris might have helped right now, might not. Paul Byron almost very much certainly would have. Oh well.