Throwback Thursday: On this day in 1997, the Calgary Flames beat Edmonton Oilers 3-2

Welcome back to a much-beloved series on the Nation Network: Throwback Thursday. We’ve resurrected this weekly piece from the grave in thanks to a fancy website that allows us to take a look at newspaper archives.

So without further ado…

On this day in 1997, the @Calgary Flames beat the @Edmonton Oilers 3-2.

It took an overtime game-winner from C Robert Reichel who blasted a point shot past Oilers goalie Bob Essensa. And while the game in an of itself was a good win for the Flames in front of their third soldout crowd of the season, what’s interesting is that only a day before the Flames canceled practice 10 minutes in.

Flames head coach Pierre Page skated off 10 minutes in after his players were unable to properly complete some of the drills going on.

“Just 10 minutes into Wednesday’s practice, Calgary Flames head coach Pierre Page skated off the ice, canceling practice, because players couldn’t do a drill correctly,” penned Calgary Herald writer Mike Board.

It begged the question, of course, why was practice canceled?

Assistant captain Steve Chiasson told Board: “We were horsesh-t out there. We were lazy. We were sloppy, we don’t want to develop bad habits…”

So, that’s one reason to cancel practice.

After the win over the Oilers, Page said: “We believe in what we were doing but we didn’t make a big deal of it. We were on the same wave length as the players and both us and they knew we weren’t sharp. Whatever the plays did after, they left the rink doing the right thing because we won.”

The Flames had some help in thanks to a bit of the flu bug. Oilers forward Jason Arnott didn’t dress due to the illness, while defenceman Bryan Marchment left in the second frame.

Calgary got goals by Dave Gagner and Aaron Gavey in the first, and third periods respectively while the Oilers had tallies by Ryan Smyth and Miroslav Satan in the same frames.

On Twitter: @zjlaing