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Instant Reaction: Leafs wilt in final Saddledome visit, Flames run streak to four wins
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images
Ryan Pike
Oct 26, 2026, 23:17 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 Scotiabank Saddledome’s crowd is typically a sea of red – or C of Red, if you will – but the audience featured a significant swath of blue jerseys on Monday night, as the Toronto Maple Leafs made their final visit to the Calgary Flames’ current rink. In front of a pretty good Leafs team and an unusually hostile crowd the Flames… just kept doing their thing.
After weathering an early flurry of Leafs chances, the Flames settled in rather nicely and executed quite well with the puck… and then hung on, en route to a 5-2 home win over Toronto to sweep their four game homestand.

The rundown

The crowd was loud and the Leafs had a ton of jump early in the hockey game, with Toronto registering the first five shots on net in the hockey game.
But the Flames settled in after about five minutes and started to get their game going. After getting a few looks on a power play, and then Aydar Suniev hitting the post off a Leafs turnover, the Flames scored on the next shift. Martin Pospisil found Matvei Gridin racing through the neutral zone and sent him into the Leafs zone with the puck and a head of steam. Gridin fired the puck over Sergei Bobrovsky’s shoulder, short-side, to give the Flames a 1-0 lead.
A little bit later, the Flames added to their goal total. Joel Farabee’s forecheck forced a Toronto turnover in their own zone, allowing Matt Coronato to collect the puck, skate to the slot, and pass to Mikael Backlund. Backlund’s wrister beat Bobrovsky to give the Flames a 2-0 lead.
The Maple Leafs got a power play later in the period after Devin Cooley was called for playing the puck outside of the trapezoid, but Cooley robbed Kirill Marchenko with a skate save in-close and the Flames killed off the penalty.
Jake Middleton capped the period off with a fight against Zach MacEwen, though the fight ended quickly with Middleton losing his footing and MacEwen wrestling him to the ice.
At the end of the first period, Easton Cowan hauled down Aydar Suniev after a clean hit. After a bit of a scrum, the Flames got a power play that carried over into the second period. On that power play, Zayne Parekh made a nice outlet pass to send Gridin in against Bobrovsky. This time, Gridin beat Bobrovsky glove-side to give the Flames a 3-0 lead. (Then he did “The Griddy” dance on the ice, because of course he did.)
The Leafs had some push-back later in the period, eventually solving Cooley midway through the period. Troy Stecher threw a low slap-pass towards the far side of the Flames’ net, and Cowan got position on Suniev and deflected the puck back-door into the Flames’ net to cut Calgary’s lead to 3-1.
The Flames couldn’t capitalize on an early power play and the Maple Leafs managed to jump on a bouncing puck that the Flames couldn’t corral in their own end, allowing William Nylander to bat the puck past Cooley to cut the Flames’ lead to 3-2.
The Leafs pulled Bobrovsky for the extra attacker, but the Flames blocked a scoring chance, headed up ice, and Farabee scored on the empty net to give the Flames a 4-2 edge.
The Flames then scored another empty-net goal, with Martin Pospisil scoring it, to make it a 5-2 victory for the home side.

Why the Flames won

I mean this as an absolute compliment: the Flames are playing with house money right now, absolutely are aware of that fact, and showed absolutely zero respect for the Maple Leafs in this game. They were making plays. They were throwing hits. They were pushing and shoving along the boards.
It was a dangerous game, though. Their defensive zone coverage was a bit too loose, and the Leafs had a few good looks that either hopped over their sticks or they just whiffed on. They really needed some bounces to maintain their hold on this game.

Red Warrior

A lot of home team players were strong. We’ll give the nod to the audacious Matvei Gridin, who had goals, offensive swagger, and some snazzy dance moves.

Turning point

Matvei Gridin’s power play marker early in the second period gave the Flames (temporarily) a three goal advantage.

Flames lineup

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

This and that

Mikael Backlund’s first period goal was his 609th point as a Flame, moving him into a tie for fifth on the all-time franchise leaderboard with the late Johnny Gaudreau.
This was the 1,623rd regular season game at the Saddledome, moving it into sole possession of eighth place for regular season games hosted in NHL history.

After Burner

Join Mike Gould and Robert Munnich right after the game for After Burner!

Up next

The Flames (5-6-0) are headed on the road for a mammoth one game road trip. They’ll visit the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday night on Amazon Prime’s Wednesday Night Hockey.

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