Notes and quotes from Wednesday’s win over San Jose
By Ryan Pike
4 years agoThe Calgary Flames beat the San Jose Sharks by a 6-4 score on Wednesday night in pre-season action. Here are some notes and quotes from the post-game festivities following that game.
MacDonald continues his audition
A veteran of 586 NHL contests, lefty defender Andrew MacDonald is in Flames camp on a professional try-out. Through two games, he’s played a ton of hockey. He racked up 22:45 against Vancouver on Monday (leading the team) and followed that with 21:23 against San Jose (only Mark Giordano played more).
MacDonald has felt pretty good about his game thus far in camp.
“Some of those shifts got caught out there a little bit long,” said MacDonald. “I mean, obviously just trying to take advantage of an opportunity here and obviously when you play more minutes you get more of a showcase. So, just trying to do what I can with the minutes.”
So far, MacDonald seems to have an inside track on an NHL job after a pair of poised games playing alongside Rob Hamilton and Michael Stone. We’ll see if he can maintain his poise when the opposition lineups feature more NHL bodies.
Gillies reflects on a tough season
Jon Gillies wasn’t superb against San Jose in his first outing of the pre-season, allowing four goals. But he was really open and thoughtful about what was a really challenging 2018-19 season for him both on and off the ice.
In response to a question about Brad Treliving’s praise of his play late in Stockton’s season, he spoke pretty candidly about everything that he went through and how he’s feeling about his game right now:
The first half of the year I sucked. And the second half of the year I played to my capability. And I think that I kept sticking with it. Also… it was a tough year off the ice. I had grandpa and grandma die within three weeks of each other, and grew up very family-oriented and very close to them. It was hard. And actually ironically enough, my grandma passing away was kind of what sent me on… I was able to go see her and she’s the happiest person in the world, so it kind of felt like a weight was lifted, everything I was carrying around, so much pressure on myself kind of went away and I was able to just play hockey. I was just reminding myself that I am good at this, and with the talent that I have, as long as the work matches it whenever I get my opportunity I know that I’m going to show it.
Peters praises Pospisil’s line
The Flames put out a fairly unusual line to start Wednesday’s game, with PTO forward Zac Rinaldo paired with Stockton-bound first year pros Martin Pospisil and Adam Ruzicka. The trio played around 11 minutes overall, but the two rookies combined for a pretty slick goal in the second period. The trio’s play earned them some praise from Bill Peters following the contest.
“Rosey’s line played head to head against Hertl a little bit,” said Peters. “Sometimes they’re in tough, other times they held their own and did a good job in the offensive job being physical and dragging it down low. Those are all part of learning and evaluating.”
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