Flames 3, Coyotes 0 post-game embers: Expectations met

The thing with the Flames is we know they’re capable of playing like a really, really good team. Performances like last night’s aren’t surprising. It’s more a question of, “Why can’t you do that every night?”

The Flames didn’t panic, didn’t play poorly in their own zone, stuck with the game until they scored, and just kept it up. It was great.

It sounds weird to say, but I’d hedge a bet to say Mike Smith wasn’t the most impressive goalie in that game. Which, I mean, he got his second shutout for the Flames, and shutouts are always good and impressive to an extent, but he was nowhere near as busy as Scott Wedgewood.

Smith had 28 shots to contend with: not a little, but also not the 44 Wedgewood had to face. After a somewhat jerky first period effort, the Flames just went out for the second and third and not only peppered Wedgewood, but completely shut the Coyotes down while they were at it. Wedgewood was really the only noticeable Coyote last night, and that’s never a good sign for a team.

Twenty-eight saves are the fifth fewest Smith has had to make throughout a full game so far this season. To be fair to him and the Coyotes, for all of Arizona’s miseries, that was the first time they’ve been shut out this season; to take away from that, they’re still the Coyotes and not particularly… you know… good.

Smith’s reaction to his shutout against his former team, though? Awesome.

Remember Johnny Gaudreau? Remember the first line? Yeah, me neither.

Now that I’m done being facetious, seriously, Micheal Ferland has such a heavy shot, and he unleashed it five times last night. Just, nothing. Sean Monahan had four shots. Gaudreau had three.

Mark Jankowski had six.

He had himself a night. His first goal was absolutely gorgeous, an incredible instinctual reaction, and the placement was perfect – tucked just above Wedgewood’s pad, just under his arm. Like, it’s beyond outstanding that he was able to do that. But that he was able to score again later in the game? Awesome.

Jankowski now has five NHL goals. He’s already had two multi-goal games, and just one single-goal game, so apparently, as far as he’s concerned, the scoring is going to come in bunches. Meanwhile, Sam Bennett with two setups was huge for him.

So far, though, the third line has only been able to find offensive success on home ice. They did put together some solid chances over three games of that road trip – well, mostly Jaromir Jagr (four shots last night!) did – but nothing went in. This time it did, and it might be just coincidental now that they’re only really scoring at home.

And how about Matthew Tkachuk’s assist in his 100th NHL game? Sixty-five points in 100 games while primarily playing in a shutdown role. That’s amazing. He and Mikael Backlund are bringing up the charge with secondary scoring: 17 points each so far this year.

The Flames controlled the bulk of the play, and eventually jumped out to a multi-goal lead. Aside from maybe fragments of the first period, they never really looked like they weren’t in control. You could see it – and the stats could confirm it, as the only players to have an under 50% 5v5 CF were the fourth line and third defence pairing (and even they didn’t really do anything wrong, it’s just unlikely to see an entire team above 50%).

The lines were rolled. Garnet Hathaway played the least at 10:42. There was no need to double shift anyone, no need to really cut anyone’s minutes. Brett Kulak played the least on the backend, and even he still got in 15:07, up from his 12:49 average this season.

Just a good all around team game, from top to bottom. They needed that. They delivered.

I just really like paying attention to goal differential, guys.

The Flames have had a positive goal differential at times this season, but it seems like every time they get there they then get blown out and things get reset back to the negatives because of one bad game. The Detroit game is the latest culprit of that.

Their performance against the Leafs didn’t help – they dropped back down to a -6 – but this three-goal win helped offset that. There’s still a ways to go until proper consistency, but hey, they soundly beat the team they should have soundly beaten. The Flames had an exceptionally impressive second period – a 5v5 65.79% CF – and their “stepping off the gas” for the third period included two goals and a 5v5 55.56% CF.

Also, this stat is nuts:

I will fully confess I completely missed Dougie Hamilton’s (four shots! Sorry I missed that one from up above) penalty and most of that kill because Shaw. And then Troy Brouwer took a call later in the game, when it was still 1-0, and you know how the penalty kill has been this season and you figure, “Well, it’d be awfully Flames for them to give up a goal right now.”

But they did not! The Flames gave up four powerplay goals against Detroit, two of which I’ll say were fradulent because that was not a spear, but still, four. In the seven games since then, the Flames have given up two powerplay goals.

Their penalty kill success rate is 75.00% – 30th in the NHL (only the Oilers are worse). But maybe they really have begun to turn a corner? It would be nice.