Like the Dallas game, the Flames had a dominant second period, but this time they managed to convert that dominance to a lead and a regulation win.

Overall, the Flames ran things whenever Daniel Winnik wasn’t on the ice. The Avs youngish, no-name defense was exposed over and over last night and they obviously missed Paul Stastny up front (who was playing, but not really present). Most of Calgary’s forward units had strong evenings with the exeception of Stajan, Hagman and Kotalik. They finished +2 each in terms of scoring chaces, but were under water in terms of possession and were the guys most frequently getting their asses handed to them by Porter, Winnik and O’Reilly.  A couple of those guys are better than what you might expect (especially Winnik), but a $9M+ "third line" facing a sophomore and a rookie in at home should be having a better evening.

Flames are also getting good mileage out of Tanguay, Iginla and Jokinen and even though they’ve been facing "top lines" recently, I would caution against assuming this will continue indefinitely. Jokinen doesn’t have the history of making this type of role work and it’s probable that things will go the other way once the schedule starts to feature heavy hitters again.