Quips and Quotes: Flames beat Senators 2-1
By Ryan Pike
5 years agoThe Calgary Flames beat the Ottawa Senators by a 2-1 score on Sunday night. Here are selected reactions from players and coaches following the game.
The scrappy Sens give them a scare
Let’s be honest, friends: the Senators are a bad team. But they’re also a team that’s jettisoning the players that won’t be around for their future, and the fact that their team is full of young guys that don’t give a damn makes them dangerous.
The Senators hung in there against the Flames, largely due to their goaltender, and gave the Flames a run for their money.
“They played well,” said Flames head coach Bill Peters. “They played very hard. You knew they were going to do that, young guys excited about being up, being in the NHL. I thought they did a good job. They defended well. We turned some pucks over and they were able to counter on that and generate some offense.”
Consistency in rule interpretation
Matthew Tkachuk scored in the first period and had his goal disallowed after a challenge. Bobby Ryan scored in the third period and had his goal disallowed after a challenge. Based upon the rationale for tossing out Tkachuk’s goal, Peters decided to challenge Ryan’s.
“Those were identical plays, basically, right?” said Peters. “I was confident on the challenge, obviously. If ours was no good I didn’t think that was going to be any good either.”
The NHL provided identical explanations for tossing out the goals, which was nice to see:
- “After reviewing all available replays and consulting with the Referee, the Situation Room determined that Tkachuk impaired Anderson from freezing the puck in the crease and pushed his glove with the puck into the net.”
- “After reviewing all available replays and consulting with the Referee, the Situation Room determined that Ryan impaired Rittich from freezing the puck in the crease and pushed his glove with the puck into the net.”
Czarnik does it again
Austin Czarnik hasn’t played a ton this year, predominantly due to the fact that Peters wants to play him on his natural right side and because the Flames have right side depth in Elias Lindholm, Michael Frolik, Garnet Hathaway and James Neal.
But in five games playing in Neal’s third line spot, Czarnik has been superb – and clutch. He has four goals, with three game-winners (including the deciding goal against Ottawa). Given that the team recalled him, it was probable that the plan was to put Curtis Lazar into the lineup at some point. But Czarnik has been good enough in his role that he’s made it virtually impossible for the coaching staff to take him out.
Recent articles from Ryan Pike
