Post-Game: Flames Get Roasted, Swept By Ducks

The Calgary Flames were fighting for their very playoff lives against the Anaheim Ducks in Game 4 at the Scotiabank Saddledome. Unfortunately, their start in no way reflected that. The Flames spotted the Ducks two early goals amidst some extremely shaky play from everyone from their goaltenders on out. They got their act together after that, but it just wasn’t enough to draw even.

The Flames were officially eliminated from the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs in four games by the Ducks, with the final nail in their coffin coming by way of a 3-1 home loss.

The locals began the first period looking rather tight and jumpy, like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. They got their tails caught under one of those rocking chairs just 5:38 in. Patrick Eaves beat Brian Elliott low blocker side from the outside of the face-off circle, closer to the boards and red line than to a scoring chance area, to make it 1-0. Elliott was promptly pulled, having made two saves on three shots.

The Ducks made it 2-0 on the first offensive rush that Chad Johnson saw. Johnson blocked Rickard Rakell’s shot from the wing, but the rebound went to the slot and Nate Thompson beat the Flames defenders to the loose puck. The visitors hung back for much of the rest of the period, though the Flames had a couple decent chances on a late power play. Shots were 12-9 for the Flames.

Brodie had a nice scoring chance, couldn’t redirect puck towards open net. Couple PPs; first generates nothing but frustration, second generates a Monahan goal off a whiffed one-timer that went off his hands and in anyway. 2-1.

The Ducks got a late power play of their own, which resulted in both a three-on-two rush for Mikael Backlund, T.J. Brodie and Michael Frolik and Troy Brouwer suffering a broken stick and the whole unit having to run around like lunatics in their own end. Johnson made a massive save on Corey Perry to keep the Flames within one – though it does sort of look like Deryk Engelland batted the puck away with his stick.

Shots were 13-9 Flames.

The Flames pressed a ton in the third, down a goal at home in a game they had to have. They even pulled Johnson for an extra attacker with 2:39 remaining. Ryan Getzlaf added an empty netter to ice this one. Shots were 12-7 Flames in the final period.

The Flames played flat and uninspired hockey early in the first period. They seemed to wake up in the second period and found their spark, but ultimately it was too little, too late and they just could not muster enough to make Anaheim’s lives difficult enough to draw even.

The Flames allowed two goals on three shots (on two goalies) in the span of 68 seconds. Everything the Flames had done wrong in the series to that point was crammed into two back-to-back sequences. Once the Flames were down, the Ducks were perfectly content to box them out and hold onto the lead they had been handed.

Let’s go with with entire 3M line. Backlund, Frolik and Tkachuk were trying their best to get something going for the Flames, especially in the second half of the game.

Coming soon!

“It’s tough. I thought we played well enough to get wins certainly in this series. Two, maybe three, you could argue. We didn’t get the goals when we needed late, we were always down one. I think if you rewind this you could see some tipping points, that we made some mistakes. From a season standpoint, very good, and this is a little tough to swallow.” – Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan on the series sweep by the Ducks.

It’s all over, folks. Presumably there will be a day off for the Flames tomorrow to clear their heads and then the pageantry of Garbage Bag Day on Friday.