Calgary Flames Post-Game: Ducks take a bite out of the Flames

The Calgary Flames hosted the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday evening in their fourth-from-last home date of the season.

The Flames were decent enough in the second period, but they were largely underwhelming on the whole en route to a 5-3 loss to the Ducks.

The Ducks carried play for much of the first period and had some dangerous chances here and there, and one of them opened the scoring.

Roughly two-thirds of the way through the second period, Olen Zellweger’s point shot was redirected by Mason McTavish in the net-front area and beat Jacob Markstrom to make it 1-0 Ducks.

First period shots 13-6 Ducks (13-5 Ducks at five-on-five) and, via Natural Stat Trick, five-on-five scoring chances were 12-3 Ducks (high-dangers were 6-1 Ducks).

The Flames tied the game up on an early power play in the second period. And they did it quickly. Five seconds after a too-many-men penalty began for the Ducks, Yegor Sharangovich tipped a Nazem Kadri shot past Lukas Dostal to make it 1-1.

The Flames grabbed a lead a little bit later off a really patient play by Andrei Kuzmenko. Kuzmenko got the puck inside the Ducks blueline, found a lane to the slot, and then waited out Cam Fowler before firing a sharp angle shot past Dostal to give the Flames a 2-1 lead.

But the Ducks replied back on the power play. Markstrom made a big stop on Leo Carlsson, but the rebound went right to Troy Terry, who fired it past the Flames’ netminder to tie it up at 2-2.

Second period shots were 12-5 Flames (11-4 Flames at five-on-five) and five-on-five scoring chances were 12-2 Flames (high-dangers were 3-1 Flames).

The Ducks grabbed the lead early in the third period. After a neutral zone turnover the Ducks entered the Flames’ zone, with Trevor Zegras finding Fowler entering the zone as the trailing man. Fowler beat Markstrom with a wrister to give the Ducks a 3-2 lead.

A little later, the Ducks scored again. Martin Pospisil rushed back to prevent a three-on-two odd-man rush, but Alex Killorn received a pass and fired the puck past Markstrom anyway – despite being covered by a Flame – to make it 4-2 Ducks.

Midway through the frame, the Flames got a little closer, as a Pospisil shot went in off Kuzmenko’s skate to cut Anaheim’s lead to 4-3.

But Killorn scored off a rebound in the Flames zone a few minutes later to make it 5-3 Ducks.

The Ducks held on for the victory.

Third period shots were 11-5 Ducks (all five-on-five) and five-on-five scoring chances were 9-6 Ducks (high-dangers were 2-2).

The Flames just weren’t all that good.

They were generally in the right spots positionally, but they didn’t do a whole lot to make the Ducks’ lives challenging – especially in the first and third periods. The Ducks won because they executed much, much better with the puck on their sticks than the Flames did, and didn’t give the Flames nearly as much defensively as the home side gave them.

Kuzmenko scored twice, so he gets it by default.

Anaheim scored twice in the third period before the Flames registered their first shot on goal of the period. That was really all she wrote.

Joel Hanley left the game midway through the first period and didn’t return, so the Flames played the better part of 50 minutes with five defencemen.

Midway through the second period, the Flames shuffled their forward lines a bit.

The Flames (34-35-5) are headed on the road once again. They visit the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday night.