Post-Game: Flames too hot for the Wings

Heading out onto the road for their longest trip of the season and without their biggest offensive weapon, the Calgary Flames likely hoped to continue their stretch of responsible team play that stretches back to the game against Minnesota where Johnny Gaudreau got hurt. Well, so far so good.

Aside from a couple rough patches, the Flames played a rock solid 60 minutes of road hockey. They got timely offense from three of their four lines and solid goaltending from Chad Johnson en route to a 3-2 victory over the Detroit Red Wings to kick off their six game road trip.

That’s four solid games in a row for these guys.

The first period was largely uneventful, with a few chances for either team during the frame as they tried to feel each other’s tendencies out. The Flames had one shift of iffy defensive play (by the Monahan line) and it cost ’em; after an initial chance was stopped, the visitors got into the habit of chasing the puck around their end like Timbits players. That chaos allowed Tomas Tatar to slide a puck through traffic…and Johnson’s legs to give Detroit a 1-0 lead. Shots were 10-10 in the first.

Calgary began to establish some effective zone time in the second – a running theme during this game for basically every line except for Monahan’s – and the fourth line was rewarded for it.

A nice sequence of the forwards out-manning the Red Wings down low allowed the puck to get passed to Dougie Hamilton at the point, leading to a deflection goal for Garnet Hathaway – his first of his NHL career – to tie the game at 1-1. Shots were 10-6 Flames in the second.

The Flames took the lead early in the third off an eerily similar play.

A nice cycle play and then a nice read by Matt Stajan on the tip-in and suddenly it was 2-0. The lead didn’t last long, as after Johnson made the initial save on an Anthony Mantha rush, the Wings forwrd was given oodles of time to recover the puck and shoot again, beating Johnson top corner to make it 2-2. But the Flames wouldn’t be denied.

On a Flames rush a few minutes later, Thomas Vanek completely lost track of Mikael Backlund in the zone. Frolik found him with a nice pass for the tap-in and a 3-2 lead. The Wings couldn’t mount a comeback and that’s how things ended. Shots were 7-6 Detroit in the period.

They out-played the Red Wings soundly at even strength, aside from a few wonky shifts by the Monahan line. The Flames couldn’t make their special teams opportunities matter, but they played smart, defensively sound hockey for the vast majority of this game and that was enough.

The Backlund goal was the game-winner, but it was a back-breaker for the Red Wings because they had just clawed back to tie the game after blowing their 1-0 first period lead. All it took was yet another nice sequence for the Backlund/Frolik/Tkachuk line and a big defensive lapse from Vanek.

Let’s go with the entire Backlund/Frolik/Tkachuk line, who were all excellent.

Dougie Hamilton was also quite good with three assists. Heck, you could make a case that everyone aside from Bennett, Monahan and Brouwer had effective evenings. That trio was fighting it the whole game.

(Percentage stats are even strength. Game score is overall.)

Check out our Twitter moments during the games, curated by our good content boy Mike Fail.

For the record, the only acceptable use of “boys will be boys” is to refer to athletes teasing each other about being excited about doing cool things like scoring goals in the NHL.

The Stamps won the West Final, are heading to Grey Cup. That game will go Sunday at 4:30 p.m. MT… head to head basically with the Flames game in Philadelphia.

The Flames (8-11-1) hop on a plane and jet off to scenic Buffalo to take on the Sabres tomorrow evening in the second game of their six game trek.