Kings 3, Flames 0 post-game embers: Still another five games left for some reason

The Flames still have a lot of work to do. For next season, though. It’s been a foregone conclusion for some time now, but finally, at long last, there’s officially nothing left to do for this one.

Any team missing its top three forwards is going to have a difficult time, no question about it. But you look at the lineup the Flames put out there and… yikes.

Mikael Backlund and Michael Frolik are excellent shutdown options, and typically pretty good for hovering around half a point per season in years in which everything doesn’t go horribly wrong. Micheal Ferland is a great option when he’s shooting at 18%. (He’s shooting at 15.3% now. He has two goals in his past 23 games. If only this had been foreseeable, somehow.) After that, uh… Troy Brouwer led the way with four shots, so that’s… good…?

The Flames needed Sam Bennett to break out this year. With 26 points, he’s the team’s sixth-highest scoring forward. He did not break out but he still ended up being one of their top scorers up front: a putrid combination all around. A Bennett who’s living up to his fourth overall potential completely turns things around for this group, but that has to happen first and it simply has not.

Mark Jankowski is having a decent enough rookie season with 21 points, but when he’s one of the highest scoring forwards one has available for a game, one is screwed.

Basically, the Flames have excellent top end talent, and a handful of hopefuls. Take away the top end talent, the hopefuls don’t work out, and you get… this. Three goals in the past five games. Five games to go. How many more goals do they score?

Or, more relevantly, who do they sign in free agency this year?

Bennett is trying, but man, every time he takes an offensive zone penalty he is not doing himself any favours.

Something to watch: this season, Bennett has taken 27 minor penalties, tied for second on the team. In 2016-17, he took 30 minors over 81 games. Bennett took more majors in 2016-17, hence a much higher penalty minute count for that season, but he’s got five games remaining to come away with an improvement.

The Flames currently lead the NHL with 858 penalty minutes this season. In 2016-17, they led the way with 956. In 2015-16, they were 19th, with 754. I don’t know if there’s a correlation with coaches and the number of penalties a team takes – that’ll maybe be an offseason project – but for the record, Glen Gulutzan’s Dallas Stars were eighth and sixth in penalty minutes the years he was their head coach.

Either way, though, the Flames have the 14th best penalty kill in the NHL this season, at 80.8%. It doesn’t mean much when they commit so many infractions, though, and that’s something the Flames are going to have to look at reducing next season, because this cannot continue. Otherwise you get these nights in which the Flames give up three powerplay goals and lose 3-0.

Brett Kulak’s top four stint lasted all of one game before he was sent back to play with Rasmus Andersson. Travis Hamonic led the way with 24:48 in ice time, including 4:06 on the penalty kill. He’s pretty likeable overall, just a shame about that acquisition cost that rendered this entire season null and void.

Andersson played 13:25, including 2:12 on the powerplay, as his… mini-NHL audition, I guess, continued.

Nick Shore played 14:08, including 1:58 on the penalty kill, in his fourth game as a Flame. I think I’m really going to like him as a depth option next season. As stated above, the Flames have bigger problems than finding adequate depth forwards, but he’s looking more like a keeper than most, at least.

With a .897 save percentage, Mike Smith has posted his fifth straight sub-.900 game. Cool.

One last thing: before this stretch, the Flames absolutely controlled their own fate when it came to making the playoffs. They had four games against the Sharks, Ducks, and Kings that could have turned the tide. They lost all four of them. By a cumulative score of 19-5. Great showing, guys.