On Saturday night, the Calgary Flames battled to a 3-1 win over the lowly San Jose Sharks. On Sunday night, they visited the powerhouse Vegas Golden Knights… and they tried their best.

Unfortunately, Vegas is a very different challenge than San Jose, and on the back half of a back-to-back, the Flames simply couldn’t muster enough offence to remain competitive. The Flames kept it close, but lost to Vegas by a 3-0 score.

The story of the first period, especially the first 12-15 minutes, was Flames netminder Dan Vladar. In short: Vladar was the reason this game was close early on. He was superb.

The Flames ended up with a 68-second two-man advantage after a minor to Tanner Laczynski and a double-minor on a high-stick on Jonathan Huberdeau by Brett Howden. However, they couldn’t capitalize on that opportunity.

First period shots were 15-12 Golden Knights. Via Natural Stat Trick, five-on-five scoring chances were 9-6 Golden Knights (high-danger chances were 6-2 Golden Knights).

Both teams had their chances in the second period, but Vegas took advantage of a rush sequence with the Flames trying to get back into their own zone to score. Alex Pietrangelo entered the offensive zone as the trailer, accepted a pass from Tanner Pearson and fired the puck towards the net. Howden tipped the puck past Vladar to give Vegas a 1-0 lead.

Second period shots were 11-9 Golden Knights. Five-on-five scoring chances were 12-7 Golden Knights (high-danger chances were 3-3).

The Flames tried to press in the third period, but Vegas did a splendid job of clogging up the middle of the ice and making the Flames chase the puck around them.

Rasmus Andersson took a penalty late in the period and Victor Olofsson blasted a one-timer past Vladar to give Vegas a 2-0 lead.

The Flames pulled Vladar for an extra attacker late, but Pearson added a late empty-netter with 6.7 seconds left to make it 3-0 Vegas.

The Golden Knights held on for the victory. The house always wins.

Third period shots were 11-10 Golden Knights. Five-on-five scoring chances were 5-5 (high-danger chances were 3-1 Flames).

The Flames couldn’t score. Like, at all. That’s generally not great. It’s not that they didn’t have their chances, but they just couldn’t execute when they had the puck, and a rested Vegas team (at home) didn’t give them a ton of secondary looks.

The Flames also looked fatigued against the Golden Knights, especially as the game wore on, and their decision-making diminished and Vegas took advantage of their mistakes. And Dan Vladar simply couldn’t cover up for all of their mistakes. He tried his best though.

Vladar was superb and deserved a better fate in this game.

Honourable mention to Matt Coronato, who kept trying to generate scoring chances, bless him.

The Flames had a lengthy five-on-three late in the period period and didn’t score, and had a power play for basically the final 3:10 of the period. When they couldn’t beat Ilya Samsonov during that span, it became pretty clear that this could be a tough evening for them in Vegas.

This is the second time the Flames have been shut out this season. The prior instance was in their previous visit to Vegas in October.

Jakob Pelletier played his 10th game of the season and has become waiver eligible.

Given the back-to-back situation, the Flaems swapped out Joel Hanley and Walker Duehr for Daniil Miromanov and Andrei Kuzmenko. Kuzmenko played the first half of the game on Kevin Rooney’s line and swapped with Pelletier in the second half, playing on Connor Zary’s line.

The Flames (17-12-7) are headed home. They’ll face the Vancouver Canucks on New Year’s Eve at the Saddledome.