Quotable: the Flames beat the Leafs 3-0
By Ryan Pike
3 years agoMissing their star goaltender for a road game against the NHL’s best team, the Calgary Flames responded with their best game of the season. They were full marks in a 3-0 shutout win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night.
Here are some selected quotes from the post-game media addresses.
Matthew Tkachuk
The Flames scored twice on the power play, with Tkachuk picking up a couple of points on special teams. But Tkachuk pointed to the performance of the seven-for-seven penalty kill as what tilted the balance.
The power play was nice, but at the end of the day what won us the game was that five-on-three kill. Unbelievable job by our PKers out there. Just such a huge momentum shift for us. Getting in shot lanes. Having great sticks. Good clears. Ritter being solid back there. Didn’t give up much on that five-on-three at all. Really, really liked what I saw from the guys back there. In my opinion, that’s what won us the game.
David Rittich
Rittich finally got a win (and some run support) in his fourth start of the season. Starting on somewhat short notice with Jacob Markstrom out day-to-day, Rittich was superb in net. He elaborated on the situation surrounding his start.
I find out this morning. Barbs told me yesterday it’s up to how Marky’s gonna feel. In the morning he came to me and [told me] I’m gonna play, so I was ready. I kinda thought there’s a chance I’m gonna play, so I prepared myself yesterday to play and I felt pretty good. The team did a really good job and helped me with rebounds, a lot of blocked shots. You could really see that team effort.
Geoff Ward
Coming off a pretty rough night on Saturday against Edmonton, Ward noted the team was better but not perfect. But there was a lot of good efforts that can potentially be built upon in subsequent games.
There was a lot of good spread throughout. It’s an explosive hockey team down the hall and I thought our guys came prepared for the task and they worked the process for the full 60 minutes. No matter what happened in the game we didn’t lose focus, we just kept plugging, and that’s a positive thing for us.
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