Despite a strong outing from the visiting Buffalo Sabres the Calgary Flames were able to take home the 5-2 victory.

It’s a Team Game – The Sabres’ momentum came in waves but stayed at a consistently high level all night long. Lots of shots and plenty of opportunities against for Dustin Wolf who continues to remain excellent. The Flames offence was very stagnant for a long time. They did struggle to get some looks but once they started scoring, they almost couldn’t stop. In reality they once again scored just three goals on an actual goaltender, but they don’t deserve punishment for finally finding the empty net… twice. They need to either do some serious work on their offensive attack or they will just continue to rely on Wolf to carry them. If one of those does not happen, I would expect the Flames to freefall in the standings.

Corsi King – Jakob Pelletier (65.81%) worked his way off the fourth line and into some regular shifts with the big boys on the club. Jonathan Huberdeau (52.82 per cent) played one of his best games in a few weeks as a result. The only other positive player in terms of overall shot attempts was Daniil Miromanov (52.08 per cent). I’m a little curious what the Flames plan is going forward because if they are serious about the playoffs they will need a higher quality top 4 defenceman than any of Miromanov, Hanley, Barrie, or Bean (44.73 per cent). They need to consistently be controlling and pushing play back towards the other night. Contributing some offence would help a ton as well.

Taken By Chance – Rasmus Andersson (43.45 SCF% || 41.13 HDCF%) was robbed of a beautiful goal by an aggressive post late in the first period. Kind of just how things are going for him lately. I’ve been less critical of him as I maybe should be, I just have a lot of respect for how he plays against top guys every night. That being said, he also needs to produce and provide offence in his role and over the last month that has kind of dried right up. He’s capable of doing more and the Flames need that Andersson back as they try and trudge forward. Along with Andersson, Jake Bean (51.58 per cent || 64.91 per cent) and Jonathan Huberdeau (67.16 per cent || 63.88 per cent) achieved involvement in six high danger chances while deployed.

xGF% – Andrei Kuzmenko (4.55 per cent) needs to stop being regularly inserted into the lineup. His involvement in the lineup just cost the organization Walker Duehr as he was claimed off waivers by San Jose. Rory Kerins (4.34 per cent) and Jakob Pelletier (82.42 per cent) have helped a lot but keeping non-effective players in your lineup because of money at this point of the season is ridiculous. Do the hard thing you don’t want to do, move on and let someone who will provide a consistent better result get a shot. William Stromgren could not do any worse than Kuzmenko and in fact could benefit from the experience.

In The Crease – After talking about extending Dustin Wolf for eight years I would like to walk back my statement. Sign him for eternity instead please. He gives this quality of team so much opportunity imagine what’s going to happen as they improve their personnel. This guy could win many, many trophies but he is certainly of the quality to win them the big one. Now it’s time to lock him up and build from the middle out. 2.51 expected goals against with just the two getting behind him – both off deflections as well.