The Calgary Flames began the season with a rough stretch of games. Over their first 13 outings, they won just twice. Not surprisingly, that start has them firmly near the bottom of the National Hockey League’s overall standings.

But for the few die-hards that insist that the Flames weren’t as bad as their record indicated, they’ve followed their first rough 13 games with a pretty solid run of results in their subsequent 13, going 7-5-1. A disclaimer: a 7-5-1 record would translate to a .577 points percentage and 95 points over an 82-game schedule – not quite enough to be a playoff team.

We were curious, though: do the Flames’ improved results coincide with a marked uptick in how they were playing?

We decided to dig into the numbers to find out.

If you look at the “results” based stats – goals for and against, and the two special teams units – the Flames have scored more, allowed fewer goals, and their penalty kill is performing much better. The power play? Still rough.

If you look at the process stats – basically everything else – they tell the real story. They have the puck about as much as they did in their first segment. They’re generating slightly more offensively and allowing slightly more offensively, but they’ve got a 0.5% uptick in shooting percentage and a 0.3% uptick in save percentage.

In their first 13 games, the Flames were out-scored 27-20 at five-on-five and 46-28 overall. In their next 13 games, they were out-scored 26-25 at five-on-five and out-scored their opponents 35-33 overall. Those minuscule percentage changes are essentially nothing, but they were enough for the Flames to win five more games.

We’ve broken things down by player, too, with everyone sorted by position and jersey number.

Devin Cooley’s numbers have taken a slight dip, but they’re still very solid and combined with him playing a bit more, he’s gotten some nice results. Dustin Wolf has played slightly less and seen his numbers recover quite a bit from his rough start.

Pretty much all of the Flames’ regular defenders had rock-solid underlyings (or better) in the second segment. Almost none of them put up impressive offensive numbers with the exception of Rasmus Andersson, whose offensive production has taken a huge leap forward – and that’s with the power play still sputtering and him and Kevin Bahl operating as the shutdown pairing.

Let’s give a shout-out to Yan Kuznetsov, though: he’s playing fairly unsheltered minutes with MacKenzie Weegar and his underlying numbers are really solid and he’s passing the eye test, too.

Among the regular forwards, everyone’s underlying numbers are generally quite good – with the exceptions of Ryan Lomberg and John Beecher – and offensive performances are sort of split into two groupings.

A handful of players are producing pretty consistently, like Nazem Kadri, Matt Coronato, Mikael Backlund, Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost and Jonathan Huberdeau. Everyone else? Hit and miss. And for a team that’s generally bereft of stars and has to score by committee, it feels like several players expected to be part of that committee haven’t been lately.

And if you wanted a glimpse of the true value of Kadri: look at how consistent his performances were across these 13-game segments. Nearly identical. The player is not without his flaws, but man, he’s reliable.

So, are the Flames playing all that much better than they were earlier on? Not especially. They’re getting slightly more saves and burying slightly more chances, and they’re generating slightly more offensively than they were earlier. But they’re also a little bit leakier defensively based on the available metrics.

They’re still a team that wins or loses games on very tight margins and isn’t a group that can out-score their mistakes, so they need to minimize them.

Through 26 games, they’ve made enough mistakes at key times that despite playing some pretty decent hockey, they find themselves looking up in the standings at the other 31 clubs in the NHL. We’ll see if they can do enough good things in the next 13 games – between now and their 39th game on Dec. 29 – to move up in the standings, or if they’ll remain firmly in the Gavin McKenna conversation.