Quips and Quotes: Flames beat Red Wings 6-4

The Calgary Flames beat the Detroit Red Wings by a 6-4 score on Friday night. Here are selected reactions from players and coaches following the game.

The Flames’ even strength game wasn’t great against Detroit. But as has become the custom recent, they’ve bailed themselves out by having effective special teams. They didn’t score multiple shorthanded goals, but their special teams managed a shortie and a power play goal in a 123 second span to tie the game and take the lead.

And in an even more improbable twist, the second power play unit scored three power play goals. In the previous 48 games, the second PP group had five of the team’s 36 power play markers. Following the game, head coach Bill Peters had a lot of praise for his second PP unit.

“Real good job by that group,” said Peters. “They ended up getting them all. Went three for three, plus a shortie, so again I liked our special teams against Buffalo and I liked them again tonight.”

Peters also commended Rasmus Andersson for getting pucks through from the point, and noted he wants the young defender to shoot more often.

It’s probably fair to say that the Flames had a rough night defensively. They were out-chanced 26-14 (per Natural Stat Trick) and gave up a lot of odd-man rushes and breakaways. Peters pointed to a tendency the team’s defenders have to pinch at the wrong time leading to all the rushes.

“[It’s] just awareness,” said Peters. “Trying to create something or make something happen when there’s nothing there. You’ve got to live to fight another day. There’s times when you’ve got to chip it down the wall. D can’t be active on pucks that aren’t clean. We’re jumping on stuff that you shouldn’t be jumping on. It’s interesting to see, we’ll get it straightened out.”