Flames 2, Capitals 4 post game embers: Time to come home boys

The Calgary Flames had a chance to take home seven of 10 points from their road trip, and looked like they might after 20 minutes. However, there was just not enough tank in the gas at the end of their journey, and the Washington Capitals wrapped this up without much fuss.

If I’m being completely honest, this game was fairly ho-hum, and that’s not the worst thing in the world. Given some of the worst stretches we’ve seen out of them, they were engaged throughout, and the loss came down to a number of blunders rather than a full-scale meltdown. There were a number of factors working against them, including both the Capitals’ rest and the fact that it was the celebration for the Washington Nationals, which clearly provided an emotional boost for everyone pro-Washington.

Jakub Vrana was very opportunistic, capping off an extremely hot week for himself. That’s not a knock on the player, who is taking advantage of an increased role this season. However, if you get the chance to take advantage of several bad plays by Mark Giordano, you absolutely must. That’s not a situation that happens very often.

Cam Talbot was fine, and looked markedly calmer in his net than his last appearance. It would have been nice to have a save on the Lars Eller goal, but he’s not the reason the Flames were trailing heading into the final frame.

Overall, the Flames played a solid game, which is encouraging given that this was what they call a schedule loss. Would it have been a statement if they won? Probably, but if the Flames are going to lose games this season (spoiler alert: they definitely are) it’s better to have them look like that than not.

Both the goals in the first period were cause for celebration! Not just for the obvious reasons of “it’s good when the Flames score” but how they came to be. That was a gorgeous effort by Mangiapane for his goal, who continues to look good alongside Backlund and Tkachuk.

Additionally, it was great to see Oliver Kylington get his first point of the season on Lindholm’s goal. There was speculation that Kylington might come out for Michael Stone given that it was a back-to-back, and it’s encouraging to see that he’s earned enough trust to keep getting the call from Bill Peters. He got full usage at 5v5 and it’s nice to see his development continue along this season.

Calgary, despite getting outshot, actually had more scoring chances than Washington (26-21), and even more high-danger chances (11-8). The majority of their best chances came in the first period, when they still had some juice, but they were able to hang and statistically even outpace one of the hottest teams in the league. That has to be good news.

Sam Bennett looked good. He’s still mostly cursed or something so, of course, that is relative and none of his shots went in, but he still looked good.

Going to come out and say it, that was probably Giordano’s worst game this season thus far. In fact, I thought that the Andersson-Kylington pairing was the only one who looked consistently good, as they are actually young and were likely fresh-ish. Giordano himself was on the wrong end of a lot of statistics, and didn’t look great either getting caught several times on bad pinches. Thankfully, he’ll likely course-correct in no time, as is his wont.

This is not something that I can quantify with anything, but it seemed like the Flames were falling down and tripping over themselves the entire time? I don’t think it was an ice issue as it didn’t seem to affect the Capitals nor the puck, but it just felt like so many plays became things that could have been if the Flames hadn’t stayed on their feet. They all looked as unlucky as Gaudreau’s stick shattering.

There was not a lot to write home about from the top line, even with Lindholm scoring. Even though Monahan scored last game, he still really needs an offensive outburst, and now that Gaudreau’s goalless skid is into double digits, something has to be done here.  They got worked over in Washington, and the competition isn’t about to get much easier looking ahead.

The power play is still firing blanks. A few more games like that, and it’ll slip into bottom-five territory.

7 – With his goal tonight, Lindholm is now on a seven-game point streak. He’s also cracked ten goals already, just 17 games in. Hands up if you had Lindholm as the least likely to regress from last season.

3 – Individual high-danger scoring chances for Sam Bennett, which led the team. It’s unlikely he ever goes off and starts putting them in, but it’s at least good for the team for him to have those chances anyway.

2.54 – The expected goals against for Talbot, compared to the notably higher one he actually had. That’s definitely more a reflection of the team than him.

0 – Zero anything from Milan Lucic, who was serving the first of his two-game suspension.

17.86 – The CF%Rel for the line of Tobias Rieder-Mark Jankowski-Michael Frolik, which was the only line that had a positive number for that stat. They were effectively functional depth tonight, which you need to win games, but cannot rely on solely to win games.

Even though the road trip is over, it’s not like the Flames will get much more rest this coming week. They still have games every other day until Saturday, after which they will finally get a rest. They’re going to need to find another gear to keep getting through this, as they keep their blistering schedule pace for the first half of the season.