After a pair of lopsided losses in their first two games of the season, the Calgary Flames headed to Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle looking to spoil the Kraken’s home-opener and get their season back on track.

That’s not what happened, though. The Flames allowed three goals in the first half of the opening period and chased the rest of the way en route to a 6-1 loss to Seattle to run their season-opening losing skid to three games.

Just 2:22 into the game, the Kraken took the lead. The Flames turned the puck over just inside the Seattle blueline, leading to a two-on-one rush the other way. Zach Whitecloud disrupted the rush with a poke check… but Connor Zary couldn’t corral a bouncing puck, but Berkly Catton could, collecting the puck and firing a shot from the slot area past Dustin Wolf to give Seattle a 1-0 lead.

A little bit later, the Kraken scored again. The Flames had a rush into the offensive zone that was disrupted. Brandon Montour flipped the puck through the neutral zone. At the Flames’ blueline, Kevin Bahl lost his footing and stumbled momentarily, allowing Mackie Samoskevich to whoosh past him, collect the puck, and then deke past Wolf and tuck the puck into the net to give Seattle a 2-0 lead.

Later still, the Flames couldn’t get anything going in the Kraken zone and the puck started going the other way. Adam Klapka couldn’t stymie Chandler Stephenson’s progress through the neutral zone and he drew the attention of defenders Yan Kuznetsov and Simon Nemec, too. But everyone in a white sweater didn’t notice Bobby McMann rushing up the far side of the zone, where he collected a pass from Stephenson, got a step on Nemec, and fired a shot top-corner past Wolf to go up 3-0.

The Flames had a power play later in the first period and had some nice puck movement and decent looks, but couldn’t bury anything.

First period shots were 11-8 Flames.

The Flames played pretty well in the first half of the second period, as the Kraken seemed perfectly content to defend and run the clock while the Flames tried to gain some offensive traction.

But midway through the period, Seattle added to their lead. On another rush into the Calgary zone, Catton put a pass to Shane Wright in the slot. Despite having Zach Whitecloud right on him, Wright threw a blind low back-hand shot that through through Whitecloud’s skates and past Wolf to give Seattle a 4-0 edge.

In the final minute of the second period, Seattle scored again. This time, the Flames turned over the puck in the offensive zone and Seattle transitioned the puck quickly. A couple quick passes gave Samoskevich a clear shooting lane from the face-off dot to Wolf’s left, and Samoskevich’s wrister off the rush beat Wolf clean to give the Kraken a 5-0 lead.

Second period shots were 10-8 Flames.

The Flames spoiled Joey Daccord’s shutout bid in the latter stages of the third period on the power play. They moved the puck well, finishing with a Matvei Gridin hard pass from the wall to the net-front area, where Morgan Frost deftly redirected it past Daccord. That cut Seattle’s lead to 5-1.

But as they were announcing the Flames’ goal in-arena, Seattle gained the Calgary zone, cycled the puck, and then Jordan Eberle fired a shot from the slot area past Wolf to give the Kraken a 6-1 lead.

Seattle held on for the win.

Stop us if you’ve heard this before.

The Flames weren’t awful. But they made tough mistakes with their puck management and defensive coverage at bad times, and those mistakes snowballed on them. They really struggled with Seattle’s speed at times, too, but in general their defensive play was lacking as a five-man group. They were way too scrambly overall, and it allowed the Kraken to take advantage of their miscues.

We won’t say Dustin Wolf is why they lost, but he was fighting it in this game. He faced a lot of high-quality chances, as he did in the opener, but the team really needed him to bail them out on one of the early goals. Instead, he allowed three goals against on the first six shots he saw.

Matt Coronato was arguably the most consistently noticeable Flame for positive reasons, putting up several shots, including some very dangerous ones, and even made a few nice defensive plays.

Honourable mention to Zayne Parekh, who looked really dynamic with the puck at times in this game.

The Flames were down three goals by the 7:40 mark of the first period. You could make a case that the entire first 7:40 was a turning point.

The Flames looked like this against Vancouver:

Yegor Sharangovich – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Matvei Gridin – Mikael Backlund [C] – Joel Farabee
Sam Honzek – Ryan Strome – Connor Zary
Maxim Tsyplakov – Martin Pospisil – Adam Klapka

Kevin Bahl – Zach Whitecloud [A]
Jake Middleton [A] – Zayne Parekh
Yan Kuznetsov – Simon Nemec

Dustin Wolf started in net, back up by Devin Cooley. The healthy scratches were Joel Hanley, Brennan Othmann and Brayden Pachal. Jonathan Huberdeau missed the game due to injury.

This was the 500th career game for Flames forward Joel Farabee.

Join myself and Cami Kepke right after the game for After Burner!

The Flames (0-3-0) are headed home. They host the Colorado Avalanche at the Saddledome on Thursday night.

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