Quips and Quotes: Flames beat Jets 4-1 in Game 1
By Ryan Pike
3 years agoThe Calgary Flames opened their 2020 post-season with an impressive showing on Saturday night. They beat the Winnipeg Jets 4-1 to take a 1-0 lead in their Qualifying Round series.
Here’s what was discussed in the media chats post-game.
A tale of two injuries
The Jets lost Mark Scheifele in the first period and Patrik Laine in the third period, both with apparent injuries. Both will see specialists on Sunday to evaluate how much time they’ll miss. Jets head coach Paul Maurice didn’t seem too steamed about the Laine injury – he confirmed it wasn’t from a Mark Giordano slash, which suggests it was from a different contact on that shift (perhaps a check from Sam Bennett along the boards) – but Maurice was livid about the Scheifele injury.
Here’s what Tkachuk had to say about the incident, preceded by a bit of an exasperated chuckle:
I’m back-checking on him and it’s such an accident. I felt terrible from the result of it. I remember he was turning away. I just went in and my left skate had a bit of the ‘speed wobbles’ and I was moving probably too fast for myself and was going down and my leg just collided with it, looked like it jammed him up. His body was going one way but the way I hit him, his leg was going one way.
Flames interim coach Geoff Ward had the same interpretation as Tkachuk, noting that Scheifele got caught in a compromising position but that he didn’t see the intent that Maurice dd.
It’s been confirmed to us by league sources that no Player Safety hearing is scheduled for the incident.
The Flames stick with it defensively
Here are a few tendencies of bad Flames efforts:
- Flames get down early.
- Flames chase, generate some chances.
- Flames don’t score immediately, so they cheat a bit defensively to get better chances.
- Flames cheat too much, the other team gets good counter-punch chances and scores.
- Flames lose despite generally out-playing the other team.
But Flames netminder Cam Talbot and Ward both praised their group’s defensive effort. They held the Jets to just 18 shots on goal. The penalty kill held Winnipeg to a mere four shots on seven advantages, another example of the Flames’ strong defensive play. Rather than cheat on defense, the Flames stuck with their game plan and were rewarded.
Ward noted after Tuesday’s loss to Edmonton: it’s not what they take, it’s what they leave behind. The Flames didn’t have a lot of defensive gaffes or turnovers and so they didn’t leave a lot behind. Talbot’s night was relatively painless due to the structured play in front of him.
Food for thought
The Flames largely had a three line team at five-on-five. Two players – Derek Ryan and Tobias Rieder – played more on the penalty kill than they did at even strength.
In a first day of Return to Play that was punctuated by a lot of special teams time in all of the games, the Flames seemed to strike a good balance for their player usage:
- PP skewed: Johnny Gaudreau, Milan Lucic, Matthew Tkachuk, Sean Monahan, Dillon Dube, Erik Gustafsson, Andrew Mangiapane
- PK skewed: Rasmus Andersson, Mark Giordano, TJ Brodie, Derek Ryan, Mikael Backlund, Derek Forbort, Noah Hanfin
- Both: Elias Lindholm
- Neither: Zac Rinaldo, Sam Bennett
The Flames dressed 18 skaters. By the end of the game, only three (Andersson, Brodie and Rinaldo) failed to register a shot on goal.
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