Calgary Flames Post-Game: Jacob Markstrom steals two points in the Twin Cities

The Calgary Flames headed to the Twin Cities on Tuesday night to play the Minnesota Wild, just a day removed from a wild back-and-forth win over Dallas. The Flames looked a bit tired at times, and didn’t have a lot going on offensively against a rested Wild team. But Jacob Markstrom was flat-out great in the Flames’ net and that gave his team a fighting chance.

Backstopped by Markstrom, the Flames beat the Wild by a 1-0 score in a shootout.

Friends, let’s call a spade a spade: this was not a particularly good hockey game. It was two defensively-oriented teams facing off, with one of them playing on the back half of a back-to-back set. Offensive execution wasn’t exactly high on the priority list in this outing.

The Wild had chances. The Flames did their level best to hang in there. Both teams got strong goaltending, though Jacob Markstrom was challenged more (and more often) in the Flames’ net than Filip Gustavsson was in the Wild cage.

The Wild pressed in the third period. Markstrom made several big stops.

This game remained tied at zero goals apiece through regulation, with Markstrom making 39 saves and Gustavsson making 23. (Via Natural Stat Trick, five-on-five chances were 24-15 Wild and high-danger chances were 13-5 Wild.)

Jared Spurgeon scored in overtime off a rebound from an initial Ryan Hartman shot (on a two-on-one play against MacKenzie Weegar), but the goal was overturned due to being off-side after the league’s automatic review of overtime goals. The Flames actually had to come back onto the ice after leaving after Spurgeon’s goal.

Neither team could score in the remainder of overtime, so it went to a shootout. Freddie Gaudreau scored for the Wild, but Nazem Kadri scored to keep the shootout going and Tyler Toffoli scored to win it for the Flames. They won this game by a 1-0 score.

For two periods, the Flames defended reasonably well – their penalty kill was decent – but had nothing going on offensively – either at five-on-five or on the power play. In the third period, the Flames looked like they ran out of gas defensively and things got scrambly. That’ll happen on the back half of back-to-backs, but Markstrom was spectacular and gave the Flames their best goaltending performance of the season.

Markstrom gave the Flames a chance and they managed to get the timely goals in the shootout to capture the extra point.

Markstrom. Nobody else on the road side was close to his level of positive impact.

The hockey gods gave the Flames renewed life in overtime when Spurgeon’s game-winner got called back. By letter of the law, yeah, it was off-side. Weird play? Definitely. Do the Flames care? Probably not.

Flames rookie forward Jakob Pelletier celebrated his 22nd birthday on Tuesday.

The Flames (29-23-13) are headed home. They’re back in action on Friday night when they host the Anaheim Ducks.