Post-Game Wrap-Up: Flames wilt against Bruins

The Calgary Flames scored early and often on Friday night against the Boston Bruins. Unfortunately, the Bruins woke up after the initial barrage and the Flames couldn’t answer back. The Flames lost 4-3 to close out their homestand.

The home side hit the scoresheet early. 20 seconds in, a pair of shots missed the Bruins net. But the second rebound bounced to Mikael Backlund for a tap-in past Jaroslav Halak to give the Flames an early 1-0 lead.

Just over two minutes later the Flames extended their lead to two. The Bruins turned over the puck in the neutral zone. A couple passes later, Tobias Rieder teed up a puck for Backlund for a one-timer and his second goal of the period to make it 2-0 Flames.

The Bruins answered back with a weird goal. The puck bounced around a bit in the Flames zone off the end boards and a few Flames over-skated the puck. Cam Talbot over-played the bounce to his right, which gave Patrice Bergeron the whole net to score on to make it a 2-1 Flames edge.

The Flames answered back with a nice goal with a weird bounce. Johnny Gaudreau took a pass from Elias Lindholm inside the offensive blueline and deked towards the net. He lost the puck near the crease, but it bounced off a defender’s skate and beat Halak to make it 3-1 Flames.

But the Bruins powered their way back. The Flames lost a draw in their own zone. A few bounces and passes later, Bergeron buried a wrist shot from the slot to make it 3-2 Flames.

Late in the period the Bruins drew even. Alexander Yelesin’s point shot hit some Bruins shin pads. He froze momentarily, allowing Charlie Coyle to sneak behind him. Karson Kuhlman sprung Coyle for a breakaway and he beat Talbot high to make it 3-3.

Shots were 12-6 Bruins and scoring chances 9-5 Bruins in the first period.

The Bruins took the lead within the first minute of the second period. Brad Marchand redirected a Brandon Carlo shot from the side boards past Talbot to give Boston a 4-3 advantage.

From there, the period got boring as heck. Matthew Tkachuk tried to fire up his team by fighting Jeremy Lauzon off a face-off. It didn’t work. Shots were 5-5 and scoring chances 5-4 Bruins in a very low event second period.

The third period was very much a continuation of the second period. The Bruins did their level best to prevent the Flames from getting good scoring chances and largely succeeded.

For all their offensive razzle-dazzle in the opening 20 minutes, they weren’t particularly great defensively while the game was up for grabs and a few bounces managed to bury ’em. The Bruins managed to take advantage of bounces and the Flames’ bloopers to keep the game close, then managed to exert themselves enough to grab a lead.

The Flames had a bit of jump, but they didn’t have enough in the tank to answer the Bruins’ talent, depth and poise.

Backlund scored twice, so he gets the nod.

The Flames allowed the go-ahead goal early in the second period. From that point, Boston went into defense-first mode and the Flames couldn’t muster a whole heck of a lot offensively.

Data via Natural Stat Trick. Percentage stats are 5v5.

The Flames have 68 points. A 95 point playoff pace through 62 games pro-rates to 71.8 points, so they’re 3.8 points off a likely playoff pace with 20 games to go.

The Flames (31-25-6) travel tomorrow. They face the Detroit Red Wings on Sunday in their final game prior to the trade deadline.