Quips and Quotes: Flames lose to Stars 2-0

The Calgary Flames lost to the Dallas Stars by a 2-0 score on Tuesday night. Here are selected reactions from players and coaches following the game.

Everybody has off nights at their jobs. For the Flames, it happened against the Stars. The Flames were out-shot and out-worked for much of the game.

“We were poor early,” admitted Flames head coach Bill Peters. “Didn’t win any face-offs therefore never had the puck, therefore you see the discrepancy in the shot clock… Faceoffs are your first 50/50 puck battle of your shift. We all know that. We take a lot of pride in that. We weren’t good enough tonight.”

Flames captain Mark Giordano was critical of his team’s sharpness and forechecking.

“Some nights you’re not gonna be feeling it, you’re not gonna be feeling your best,” said Giordano. “Our passes weren’t very sharp all night, but we’ve gotta commit to putting the puck in and winning by out-forechecking them. And tonight we were just turning over way too many pucks.”

Per Natural Stat Trick, the Flames allowed 13 high-danger scoring chances. That’s the most high-danger chances they’ve allowed in a single game since the Oct. 21 game against the New York Rangers that saw the Blueshirts get 28 high-danger scoring opportunities.

Since their 9-1 thrashing at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins on Oct. 25, the Flames have only allowed teams to generate double digit high-danger chances on four occasions:

The fact that Dallas has played so well against the Flames is probably worth exploring, but four games where the Flames have played clunky defense over the past seven weeks isn’t all that concerning quite yet.