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Flames Post-Game: Awful opening period sinks Flames in St. Louis
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Photo credit: Joe Puetz-Imagn Images
Ryan Pike
Jan 16, 2025, 22:43 ESTUpdated: Jan 16, 2025, 22:45 EST
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Well, the good news is that the Calgary Flames do not need to make another trip to Enterprise Center to face the St. Louis Blues for the rest of the season. The bad news is that the Flames, in the second game in St. Louis in three days, once again got out to a rough start and never entirely recovered.
After spotting the Blues a 3-0 lead in the first period, the Flames couldn’t dig themselves out of that hole en route to a 4-1 loss to the Blues. The Flames conclude their season series against St. Louis with an overtime loss and two regulation losses.

The rundown

As they did on Tuesday, the Flames were on their heels in the first period. They managed to hold the Blues off the board for the better part of the first five minutes, though.
However, just shy of five minutes in, the Blues got the opening goal. The Flames’ fourth line was hemmed in their own end and could not manage to connect on a zone exit pass. After turnovers behind the net by Joel Hanley and MacKenzie Weegar in rapid succession, Brayden Schenn buried a feed from Dylan Holloway to give the home side a 1-0 lead.
About 10 minutes later, the Blues got another one. This one was Colton Parayko walking in from the point and beating Dustin Wolf five-hole with a clean look to give the Blues a 2-0 lead.
A little bit later, the Blues padded their lead further. They hemmed the fourth line into their own end (again), cycled the puck, and that allowed Jordan Kyrou a chance to get a shot off from the top of the circles that got past Wolf to make it 3-0 St. Louis.
First period shots were 14-7 Blues. Via Natural Stat Trick, five-on-five scoring chances were 16-4 Blues (high-danger chances were 7-1 Blues).
The Flames woke up to open the second period, absolutely owning puck possession and throwing a barrage of rubber on net. Blues goaltender Joel Hofer stood tall… for awhile.
Midway through the second period, Rory Kerins and Jakob Pelletier combined on some nice puck retrieval deep in the Blues zone, then fed the puck to Yegor Sharangovich in the slot area. Sharangovich beat Hofer low stick-side to get the Flames on the board and cut the St. Louis lead to 3-1.
But a little while later, the Flames got caught on a bad line change and in the frenzy of chances following that bad change, Brayden Pachal took a minor for slashing. On the resulting Blues power play, Schenn scored his second of the game to restore the home side’s three-goal lead at 4-1.
Second period shots were 17-9 Flames. Five-on-five scoring chances were 12-5 Flames (high-dangers were 4-2 Flames).
The Flames pressed more in the third period, but the Blues were much more composed defensively than they were in the middle frame and did a pretty solid job of keeping the Flames to the outside and disrupting their attacks.
The Blues held on for the 4-1 victory.
Third period shots were 6-5 Flames. Five-on-five scoring chances were 6-6 (high-danger chances were 2-2).

Why the Flames lost

The Flames were flat-out not good in the first period. Wolf probably wants the Parayko goal back, but his teammates did him no favours on the other two first period goals. You don’t win a lot of road games when you spot the home side three goals in the opening 20 minutes.
The Flames were better in the final 40 minutes, but this game was well below their displayed standards this season. You can give them a mulligan for Tuesday’s loss because of the back-to-back situation (and three games in four nights), but this one just was not good enough from a team that has designs on being in the post-season.

Red Warrior

Coronato had a lot of jam in this game and was consistently noticeable, so we’ll go with him.

Turning point

The Flames cut St. Louis’ lead down to two goals… and then they had a bad change, a bad penalty, and then allowed a power play goal. You could see the hope being sucked out of their bench after the fourth St. Louis goal went in.

This and that

Dustin Wolf rotated in for Dan Vladar in net, but otherwise the Flames made zero changes to their lineup.
Rasmus Andersson played his 499th career NHL game.
Brayden Pachal fought Nathan Walker in the third period.

Up next

The Flames (21-16-7) are off to Manitoba! They’ll visit the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday night as part of Hockey Day in Canada festivities.
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