Post-Game: different cities, same story

Preseason hockey does not count and therefore doesn’t really matter all that much. But playing well is a good thing whenever a team can do that. The Calgary Flames had a pair of exhibition games against the Edmonton Oilers and lost both of them… for the third year in a row. They dropped a 5-4 affair in Calgary and lost by a 5-2 score in Edmonton.

The games mean zilch in the standings. From an evaluation standpoint, you can probably take a handful of things away from the proceedings. In terms of adding fuel to the fire for the regular season opener on Oct. 4, it’s not like the Flames needed much additional motivation after losing all five games to Edmonton last year.

The Flames opened the scoring 61 seconds in, as Mark Giordano sprung Sean Monahan for a two-on-one break – via a center-ice deflection by Micheal Ferland – and Monahan went up top on Laurent Brossoit to make it 1-0. The lead evaporated a few minutes later, though, as an Adam Larsson slap shot squeaked through Mike Smith’s pads and made it 1-1. Midway through the period, a Travis Hamonic miscue at center ice sent Yohann Auvitu in and his slapper also squeaked through Smith to make it 2-1. Shots were 11-9 Edmonton.

The Oilers padded their lead a bit early in the second. Jujhar Khaira beat Smith on the glove-side via deflection to make it 3-1. Drake Caggiula added a power play goal to make it 4-1, finally beating Smith with the Oilers third successive chance on their man advantage. The Flames responded before the period ended, though, as a Dougie Hamilton slap shot beat Nick Ellis (on the second shot the Oilers netminder faced after replacing Brossoit midway through the period) to make it 4-2. Shots were 9-7 Edmonton.

Edmonton went up 5-2 early in the third, with Kailer Yamamoto grabbing an errant pass in the Flames end and beating Gillies with a nice wrister. T.J. Brodie added a power play goal later to make it 5-3, and Dillon Dube fed Mark Jankowski with a great individual effort in a late shorthanded situation to make it 5-4, but that was all she wrote. Shots were 13-5 Flames.

The Flames got off to a lousy start and Smith just couldn’t keep it out of his net early. The whole team looked rusty and out of sync early, but they managed to get their legs moving as the game wore on and by the end of it they almost resembled a hockey team.

Too little, too late, but at least it’s “only” preseason.

The Auvitu goal. It deflated the team and put them down a goal heading to the intermission, creating a deficit that the Flames couldn’t quite claw back from.

Dillon Dube had about three or four really nice scoring chances but just couldn’t bury any of them. On a night where the Flames were doing very little to create, Dube was doing so.

Jon Gillies was pretty sharp, joining the game in relief and make a few nice saves.

(All figures via our friends at Natural Stat Trick. Percentage stats are 5-on-5.)

Matt Bartkowski and Hunter Shinkaruk scored in the third to break the Edmonton shutout attempt, but the Oilers won 5-2 at Rogers Place. Wearing letters (A) for the Flames were Sam Bennett, Matt Stajan and Michael Stone.

It’s the third consecutive year where Edmonton has won both sides of the split squad series.

“I thought he made some things happen. He got caught a little bit, all these penalties in the preseason, you see all these preseason games… I thought he made the most of his shifts when he got them because we were running our power play units.” – Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan on Dube’s performance.

“He’s a heck of a player, so I knew if I just kept going to the net there was a chance that he was going to get the puck over to me. It was a heck of a play by him to go around him and to make that pass over.” – Jankowski on Dube’s pass on the 5-4 goal (while Dube was battling Adam Larsson on the rush).

“Not very well [chuckles], but if I had a perfect game I wouldn’t have anything to work on for the next couple weeks. It wasn’t great, but it was nice to get into a game at least and have some stuff to work on here. Get the jitters out and get used to a new team and stuff like that. I won’t lose any sleep over it. I’ll get back to work and try to be better every day.” – Smith, on how his first (preseason) start went.

The Flames are back at it on Wednesday evening at the Saddledome when they face the remnants of the Vancouver Canucks roster, as the majority of the team went to China. It’ll be a veteran Flames team against the Utica Comets. It’ll be carried by Sportsnet.

Cuts are coming tomorrow most likely, as Gulutzan indicated that the club will get down to two groups (and somewhere around 50 players based on the numbers he threw around).