Looking back on the Calgary Flames at the 2019 Heritage Classic

The 2023 Heritage Classic will be the third time in Calgary Flames history that they’ve played an outdoor game. Their most recent outdoor game was in 2019, when the Flames experienced Regina for a neutral site game hosted by the Winnipeg Jets at Mosaic Stadium.

Here’s how it all went down.

Here’s how head coach Bill Peters drew things up:

Johnny Gaudreau – Elias Lindholm – Matthew Tkachuk [A]
Sam Bennett – Sean Monahan [A] – Andrew Mangiapane
Milan Lucic – Mikael Backlund – Michael Frolik
Tobias Rieder – Derek Ryan – Alan Quine

Mark Giordano [C] – TJ Brodie
Noah Hanifin – Travis Hamonic
Oliver Kylington – Rasmus Andersson

David Rittich
(Cam Talbot)

The Flames had two healthy scratches: forward Mark Jankowski and defender Michael Stone. Austin Czarnik was injured and unavailable due to being on the injury reserve list.

Played in late October 2019, the game was played with temperatures hovering around minus-5, albeit with a wind chill that made it a bit colder.

Nobody scored a five-on-five goal in this hockey game.

The Flames opened the scoring midway through the second period on a power play. With Andrew Copp in the box, Elias Lindholm scored. The Jets challenged the goal for being off-side, but the goal was reviewed and upheld, and the Jets took a delay-of-game minor penalty as a consequence.

The Jets pressed in the third period in an attempt to even things up, and they finally did so late in the period. Mark Giordano was given a hooking minor and on the ensuing man advantage Josh Morrissey scored to tie the game.

The game headed to overtime as a result of Morrissey’s late tally, and Sean Monahan took a tripping penalty early in the overtime period. The Flames managed to kill off the penalty, but Bryan Little scored for Winnipeg just 25 seconds after Monahan’s minor expired to give the Jets a 2-1 overtime victory.

The two teams combined for 75 shots: 45 from Winnipeg and 30 from Calgary. The Flames were out-shot 37-24 at five-on-five and 8-6 on special teams. David Rittich made 43 saves, but was dinged with the loss.

The Flames dropped to 6-5-2 after the loss. They kept wobbling around the .500 mark for awhile longer before finally getting going with a strong January. Peters would remain as the team’s head coach for just a month after the Heritage Classic; after allegations of past racial abuse towards former player Akim Aliu emerged in late November, Peters resigned as head coach and was replaced by associate coach Geoff Ward.