Flames not good enough against Chicago
By Ryan Pike
4 years agoA fortnight ago, the Calgary Flames were thumped at home by the Edmonton Oilers. They allowed eight goals and many around the team pledged that there would be improvement. It couldn’t get much worse, right? Well, on Saturday night the Flames were similarly porous defensively and occasionally disengaged en route to allowing another eight-spot to a conference rival – this time the Chicago Blackhawks.
Listening to the player comments following this one-sided home loss, they sound eerily similar to what they pledged to improve following the Edmonton loss.
“I felt bad for our goalies tonight,” said Matthew Tkachuk. “Too many point-blankers. They’re a really good team off the rush, a really good offensive team. I wouldn’t say we fed right into them, but we just weren’t good defensively. Gave up eight goals. Weren’t good defensively.”
“Obviously I think our details are way off at home,” said Elias Lindholm. “Losing the third guy and leaving D for three-on-twos or two-on-ones, our details are not good enough at home.”
“For whatever reason our defensive zone and our turnovers, we fell apart,” said Sam Bennett. “We gave up way too many odd man rushes and good looks and they capitalized.”
Following a one-sided loss to the Nashville Predators back on Feb. 6 – 10 days ago – Flames interim head coach Geoff Ward delivered an impassioned speech about the team’s need to improve. Much like Groundhog Day, Ward hit many of the same notes in his post-game comments.
In short? The team needs to be more invested from puck-drop.
I just didn’t think our battle level was as high as it needed to be. You know those first initial battles at the puck, we didn’t win as many of them as you normally need to tonight… If you throw a puck in the corner, who’s going to come up with it? We need to make sure that it’s us way more often than where it was tonight, for sure.If you’re not playing at the same intensity level as your opposition, it makes for a long night. The bottom line is if your compete level is not where it needs to be, this is an awful tough league to win in. And I don’t think right now, at home, you need to look any further than that.In this league the work ethic and the battle level and the compete, that’s your ante. If you’re not prepared to throw that in right from the very beginning, it’s a difficult league to win in.
The Flames allowed the first goal in a game for the 34th time this season. They never led in the game. If this sounds familiar, it’s because they’ve spent more time chasing in games than everybody except Detroit, Los Angeles and Ottawa.
Ward pulled David Rittich from the game after the fourth Chicago goal. It was an attempt to change the tide in the game, not a reflection of the goaltender’s performance.
“I was just trying to change momentum at that point in time,” said Ward. “I thought we left them out to dry on a few of those goals. I just felt like we needed a wake-up and I felt like that might change the momentum a little bit so I made the call.”
The Flames have 22 games remaining in the season. They’re still very much in the playoff picture, though they’ve made their lives more difficult with losses such as Saturday night’s. They’ve once again pledged to be more attentive to the details and to make the Saddledome a tougher place to play for the opposition.
With 13 home dates remaining on the calendar and a playoff berth very much hanging in the balance, we’ll see if they can pull it off.
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