Calgary Flames Post-Game: Flames overcome slow start to beat the Jets

The Calgary Flames welcomed the Winnipeg Jets to the ‘Dome on Monday afternoon in a Family Day holiday matinee. The Flames got out to a bit of a rocky start, trailing 3-1 11:24 into the game. But they seemed to settle down after that, and they ended up playing one of the better games in awhile.

The Flames rallied back and beat the Jets by a 6-3 score to halt their losing skid after three games.

The opening 20 minutes of this game were eventful.

The Flames opened the scoring just over four minutes in. Off a broken play in the neutral zone, Oliver Kylington collected the puck, saw a lane, and decided to go for a skate to the Jets net. He walked in from the neutral zone and chipped a backhander past Connor Hellebuyck’s glove hand to give the home team a 1-0 lead.

But the Jets answered back, on the power play, in the form of a familiar face. With Rasmus Andersson in the box for hooking, a Kyle Connor shot was stopped by Jacob Markstrom. Sean Monahan, parked by the blue paint, saw the puck trickle between Markstrom’s pads and land behind him, and poked the puck over the line to tie the game at 1-1.

On the very next shift, just 42 seconds later, Monahan scored again. From the same spot. On a very similar play. This time, the Jets won an offensive zone draw back to the point. Dylan DeMelo’s shot was stopped by Markstrom, but Monahan bonked in the rebound from the net-front area to give the visitors a 2-1 lead.

And midway through the frame, Monahan completed a natural hat trick. With Oliver Kylington in the box for tripping, a Connor one-timer shot from Markstrom’s left didn’t quite connect, but the puck blooped around and went to Monahan in his usual spot, around the crease, and he jammed it home to make it 3-1 Jets.

The Flames got one back soon afterwards, though. Mikael Backlund’s line generated some zone time and Andrew Mangiapane set up a moving Blake Coleman – cutting across the slot – for a back-door tap-in to cut the Jets’ lead to 3-2.

First period shots were 13-13 (10-6 Flames at five-on-five) and, via Natural Stat Trick, five-on-five scoring chances were 11-4 Flames (high-dangers were 4-3 Flames).

Just shy of five minutes into the second period, the Flames drew even. With Sean Monahan in the box, MacKenzie Weegar had a point shot tipped by Nazem Kadri in front of the net, which beat Hellebuyck to tie the game up at 3-3.

With just shy of four minutes left in the middle period, the Flames grabbed the lead off a nice rush play. Yegor Sharangovich’s pass to the slot area bonked off a back-checking Monahan, but bounced right to a pinching Andersson. He shuffled the puck to Jonathan Huberdeau, who quickly fired it past Hellebuyck to give the Flames a 4-3 lead.

Second period shots were 12-8 Flames (11-8 Flames at five-on-five) and five-on-five scoring chances were 11-8 Flames (high-dangers were 5-3 Flames).

The Flames killed off a penalty midway through the third period and Nazem Kadri created a rush chance, feeding Mangiapane after drawing the defenders over. Mangiapane beat Hellebuyck to give the Flames a 5-3 lead.

Kadri added an empty-netter late in the game to make it 6-3 Flames. They held on for the win.

Third period shots were 10-9 Jets (9-8 Jets at five-on-five) and five-on-five scoring chances were 8-3 Flames (high-dangers were 3-1 Flames).

The red team were the slightly better team at five-on-five. However, they took too many penalties and sapped their own momentum in the first period. But they seemed to calm things down, reel in the infractions, and it allowed them to establish a rhythm and take hold of the hockey game.

Let’s give it to Kylington, who scored his first regular season goal since April 2022 and was generally really noticeable. But if you dump out the first 12 minutes, a lot of players in red had good afternoons.

Let’s give it to the fourth Flames goal. Heading into the second intermission with a lead was pretty big for a Flames group that hadn’t won in a little bit.

This was Markstrom’s 200th appearance (and 199th start) for the Flames. It was also his 100th win.

We saw some new lines initially:

By the second period, they rotated Kuzmenko to the Rooney line, Zary back with Kadri and Hunt up with Sharangovich. It seemed to work.

The Flames (26-25-5) return to Saddledome ice on Thursday night when they host the Boston Bruins.