To foil Khudobin, the Flames need to focus on pinpoint shot placement

And so the barometer quivers.

The opening puck-drop of Game 6 between the Calgary Flames and the Dallas Stars will trigger a 60-minute timer whose expiration could equally save or sink the former squad’s playoff run. If the Flames beat the Stars, they postpone all possible heartaches for either team until Game 7. If the Stars beat the Flames? A blown series, a squandered season, an emotional meltdown in Cowtown.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. Boats against the current, the Flames must beat on. The pressure is potent. The pressure is palpable. Do you hear that? The coughs? The retches? It is the sound of dozens of players, hundreds of staffers, and thousands of Flames fans positively gagging on the stench of pressure leading up to Game 6.

And at its fundamental, elementary, simplest level, the pressure is on the Flames to outscore the Stars, is it not? Strip it down and the Flames cannot win, cannot survive without scoring goals.

Game 5 showcased a Flames team that fired 29 shots on target—plus clattered the iron several times—but only converted once. Despite Cam Talbot’s sustained brilliance these playoffs, another lone-goal performance cannot secure the Flames a win. The boys in red need to score. They need to score quickly, they need to score often, they may very well need to score plenty. Every time they sling rubber at Anton Khudobin, the Flames must shoot to score. No time left to putter around. They must shoot to score.

Of the 10 total goals scored on Khudobin this series—three in Game 1, two in Game 3, four in Game 4, one in Game 5—four of them have been on clean shot attempts, i.e. scoped, scanned, deliberate shots from a distance that solved Khudobin—instead of dekes (like Dillon Dube’s second dazzler in Game 2), rebounds (galore, so far), deflections (Rasmus Andersson’s blueline shot tipped by Andrej Sekera’s upturned blade in Game 1), or whatever bungling buffoonery Mikael Backlund showcased on his shorthanded goal in Game 3.

Now, of these four goals-from-shots-alone, every single one—without fail—has beaten Khudobin on his glove-side. And of these four glove side goals, three have specifically been low glove-side (Sam Bennett’s first goal in Game 3 sailed over the Stars tendy’s crooked elbow, a touch higher). Yes, three of the four arrows pierced one single bullseye.

As in three of the four goals all seeped through that same slit crevice between his pad and his catcher.

Like if you looped a long, long string through the handle of a milk jug and around the crossbar of a hockey net, dangling the plastic twelve inches above ground-level, all three shots would not only have dented the big jug itself but nicked the same edge of its handle.

Now, none of these goals suggest that Khudobin has a worthless, defective glove-hand that the Flames could exploit every single time, from any vantage, at any speed. Every time a Flames player has netted a shot low glove-side (as we will examine goal-by-goal below), extraneous factors have helped him out—cross-ice passes, effective screens, etc etc.

But the pattern should not be ignored. Aiming low glove-side has smeared the icing on the cake for too many goals the Flames have baked so far to be a simple coincidence. No matter how many passes, positions, players increase the danger of any given shot attempt, every goal scored boils down to its shot. So let us revisit the three low-glove goals allowed by Khudobin against the Flames so far, assessing the shots and addressing the context that spawned them, wondering if that sliver of mesh could be a secret to outscoring the Stars and deflating all that pressure.

Remember this absolute missile?

Fans on Twitter all gushed over the slick pass from Milan Lucic, but the low-glove release from Dube is something pure, pristine, beautiful. Everyone knows that the one-knee one-timer is already the sexiest way one can clobber a puck, but how Dube levels the disc (perfectly level itself) makes it even sexier. And the slow-motion replay proves that low glove-side was the only slot of net in which his blast would fit. Khudobin crosses his entire crease as he shifts gaze away from Lucic, spills onto the ice and slides over to meet the oncoming puck. He stretches his arm as far as he can, his glove hovering at the correct height, but. Since the flash of a pass forced Khudobin to suddenly lunge to his right, one cannot blame the goal on Khudobin’s glove-hand alone, label it weak automatically. The puck’s lateral movement unzipped the pocket of low glove-side net. But hey—it was Dube’s shot placement that closed it back up.

Here the shot placement worked because Khudobin had no chance to time a counteractive flick of the wrist, regardless of whether low glove-side is even a shortcoming for him. The shot was a rocket, and Khudobin only saw sweaters.

The near-drugged confusion in that masterful zoom says all you need to know. His view mostly obstructed by a parked Zac Rinaldo, Khudobin processes Brodie’s shot in flickers. Impaired vision? Cue an impaired reaction. Navigating a screen tempts Khudobin into raising his glove too high, assuming a top-corner destination for puck. His impulse proves false. The puck slips under Khudobin’s sleeve, a quintessential low-glove strike, all because Rinaldo wiggles his butt in front of his mug and makes him rely on instincts alone. And if Khudobin’s instincts dictate ignoring the space between his pad and his glove, all the better for the Flames if they choose to target it.

Presenting, perhaps, the nicest goal of the Flames’ playoffs so far:

It competes with Dube’s above one-timer and aforementioned deke at the very least. Manifold elements colour the replay of this goal absolutely golden. The slapshot pump fake, the nimble pivot, the sprawled and swindled defender, the nifty toe-drag, the slingshot recoil of the netting. Backlund pulls off an awesome individual effort to score on this low glove-side bullet—at first glance. But once again, a Flames player yet again found some vacant twine between Khudobin’s flattened pad and tucked elbow thanks to lateral movement and a teammate’s screen. And the most fascinating aspect of this goal is that the two factors that led to his respective failures to plug the hole and track the puck were actually intertwined—the screen forced Khudobin to slide from one side to the other.

By planting himself at the crest of the crease, Tobias Rieder blocks Khudobin’s central vision. Naturally, Khudobin needs to crane his neck to either his left or his right to see past the living-breathing barrier. Here he fatefully cranes to the right, his blocker-side. Any perceptive hockey player would notice the goalie favouring one side and immediately launch the puck towards the other untended side (as where Khudobin’s head is not, his shoulders/torso are not either because, duh, that’s how human bodies lean). Luckily for the Flames, Backlund is one such perceptive hockey player. Khudobin chases the shot from the wrong side of the net, and Rieder’s screen only hurtles yet another boulder in his path because he loses sight of the puck as he moves. A screen, lateral movement, a yin/yang dynamic that gifts the Flames a goal only because Backlund picks the spot Khudobin neglected: Low. Glove. Side.

And what if every time a screen obscures his direct sightline, Khudobin opts to peek to the right like that instead of the left? Who knows. But if that is his natural inclination, his usual strategy, to tilt blocker-side? That would mean he leaves his low glove-side vulnerable. That would mean targeting that region is the best option for the Flames to score with traffic in front. That would mean the Flames should keep shooting where they have been scoring, low glove-side. Because, on the cusp of leaving the hub, scoring has become a matter of life-or-death importance.

So, since every shot counts in resisting elimination, maybe the Flames should make like Jay Gatsby and try to repeat the past. Maybe they should remember these goals and the circumstances that birthed them, carry these memories into Rogers Place and strive for success through imitation. Execute passes, set screens, aim low-glove—rebounds and deflections can follow, too, if Khudobin boots the initial shot aside. But essentially, if low-glove side works and scoring is scarce and the season definitely depends on it, maybe the Flames need to focus on aiming there during Game 6. Maybe it is their best bet.

Because maybe, just maybe, low glove-side is Anton Khudobin’s kryptonite.