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Instant Reaction: Flames fade after good start, lose at home against Avalanche
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images
Ryan Pike
Oct 8, 2026, 23:44 EDT
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Welcome to Instant Reaction, where we give you our instant reaction to tonight’s Calgary Flames game and ask our readers to do the same in the comments section below! 
The Calgary Flames returned to home ice for the first time in a week, hoping to put together a good effort and, ideally, also a good result. The effort was mostly there, but the details weren’t quite up to snuff for big chunks of the game. As a result, they didn’t get a favourable result.
The Flames skated to a 7-3 home loss at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche to run their season-opening losing streak to four games.

The rundown

The opening period was pretty balanced, all things considered. The Avalanche had their looks, but the Flames defended pretty well.
The Avalanche opened the scoring late in the frame. The Flames got hemmed into their zone a bit, the Avalanche got their cycle going, and Cale Makar made a superb slap-pass to the net-front area for a deflection goal from a pinching Devon Toews to make it 1-0 Avalanche.
Before the end of the period, the Flames responded back, though. On a bit of a broken play in the neutral zone, Zachary L’Heureux fell down at the Calgary blueline. Jonathan Castagna made a nice little chip pass, getting the puck past L’Heureux and sending Adam Klapka in on a rush chance along the way. Klapka opted to cut towards the middle of the ice and shoot, beating Scott Wedgewood top corner to tie the game at 1-1.
First period shots were 8-6 Flames.
The game got away from the Flames in the second period.
A few minutes into the frame, after a good Flames penalty kill, the Avalanche found their legs and hemmed the fourth line into the Flames end. Once again, the Avalanche threw the puck to the puck and a Toews point shot – with a couple bodies in front of Devon Cooley – hit the net to give the Avalanche a 2-1 lead.
A couple minutes later, the Avalanche scored again. This time, Cale Makar skated into the Flames’ zone off the rush and fired a puck on Cooley that seemed to handcuff him a bit in-close, and the puck blooped over his pads and into the net to make it 3-1 Avalanche.
The Flames ended up hemmed into their own end for the better part of two minutes after a Martin Pospisil errant pass in the Avalanche zone. After about a dozen shot attempts over two minutes, Nathan MacKinnon cranked a one-timer from the point to extend the Avalanche lead to 4-1.
Matt Coronato fought L’Heureux late in the second period. All things considered, it was a decent scrap.
Second period shots were 13-11 Avalanche.
The Avalanche pulled away a little bit in the early third period.
A MacKinnon rush chance at full speed narrowly missed the Flames net, but the Avalanche chased down the puck, threw it back to the point and Makar blasted the puck past Cooley to make it 5-1.
A little later, Jaden Schwartz beat Cooley to make it 6-1.
Mikael Backlund and Kevin Bahl scored as the third period wound down to cut the Colorado lead to 6-3.
But Schwartz scored his second goal of the period, with a puck on net bonking in off Jake Middleton to make it a 7-3 Avalanche lead. (It was hard to tell off the replay if Schwartz was trying to shoot on Cooley, trying to throw a puck at the net for a rebound for a teammate, or throwing it to the net-front area for a deflection… but it went in anyway.)
The Avalanche held on for the road win.

Why the Flames lost

Credit where it’s due: the Flames played a pretty good first period. They rolled their lines, killed off the too many men minor they took, and generally played smart hockey. Heck, their fourth line scored a pretty nice goal. All-in-all, something to build upon.
But the wheels fell off in the second period for them. Their puck management wasn’t great. Their in-zone defence wasn’t great. Their breakouts weren’t great. It wasn’t like their were out-and-out awful, but there wasn’t anything in the second frame for them to hang their hat on in order to build momentum.
Give the Flames credit, though; they battled in the third period and did their best to try to climb back into this game.

Red Warrior

Y’know what? We’re giving it to the captain. Mikael Backlund had a goal, led the team in shots, and was pretty noticeable throughout the game.
Honourable mentions to Joel Farabee and Adam Klapka, who also had pretty good outings.

Turning point

The game was pretty tight in the first period, but the Avalanche scoring twice in the second period during a span of about two and a half minutes really allowed them to grab hold of the game, and visibly seemed to deflate the Flames’ mojo. The Avalanche carried play from that point on and the Flames were chasing. Again.

Flames lineup

The Flames looked like this against Colorado:
Matvei Gridin – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Yegor Sharangovich – Mikael Backlund [C] – Joel Farabee
Sam Honzek – Martin Pospisil – Ryan Strome
Aydar Suniev – Jonathan Castagna – Adam Klapka
Kevin Bahl – Zach Whitecloud [A]
Jake Middleton [A] – Zayne Parekh
Yan Kuznetsov – Simon Nemec
Devin Cooley started in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. The healthy extras were Joel Hanley, Maxim Tsyplakov and Brennan Othmann. Jonathan Huberdeau missed the game due to injury.

This and that

Flames forward Jonathan Castagna played his first NHL game. Teammate Mikael Backlund played his 1,152nd NHL game.

After Burner

Join Mike Gould and Kent Wilson right after the game for After Burner!

Up next

The Flames (0-4-0) are back at it on Saturday night when they host old divisional foes, the Anaheim Ducks. It’s the late game on Sportsnet’s Saturday Night Hockey.

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