The Calgary Flames saw Jonathan Huberdeau return to action on Saturday night against the Vegas Golden Knights. He scored a goal in his first game back.

That concludes the “good news” portion of this recap.

The Flames were out-scored by the Golden Knights in every game situation, and they were pretty thoroughly out-played by the home side en route to a pretty one-sided 6-1 loss at T-Mobile Arena. The result runs the Flames’ current losing streak to five games.

Vegas scored 46 seconds into the game on the very first shot that Dustin Wolf saw. And, in what became a bit of a trend, we’re not quite sure what Wolf could’ve been expected to do on the play. Kevin Bahl threw a blind pass behind the net to a seemingly unsuspecting MacKenzie Weegar. Ivan Barbashev stole the puck and fed Mitch Marner in the slot, and Marner beat Wolf to give the Golden Knights a 1-0 lead.

After Brayden McNabb was called for interference, the Flames tied things up on a power play. After a bit of quick passing, Jonathan Huberdeau put a puck on net from in-close and then jammed his own rebound past Adin Hill to tie things up at 1-1.

But a little later, Rasmus Andersson accidentally chucked a puck over the glass in the Flames zone and took a delay of game minor. On the resulting power play, some quick passing between Jack Eichel, Marner and Tomas Hertl gave Hertl a clean shot from the slot that he put past Wolf to give Vegas a power play goal and a 2-1 lead.

A little later, Vegas cashed in again. Weegar and Joel Hanley both went after Eichel on a zone entry. The Flames’ in-zone defensive coverage got a bit spotty as Mark Stone collected the loose puck and skated towards the Flames’ net. With both he and Eichel largely unencumbered, they executed a nice give-and-go passing play that ended with a back-door tap-in by Stone to make it 3-1 Vegas.

First period shots were 13-9 Flames. Via Natural Stat Trick, 5v5 scoring chances were 7-5 Flames and high-dangers were 4-2 Golden Knights.

Vegas added another goal in the early minutes of the second period. This time, Barbashev out-battled Bahl for position in front of the Flames net, which allowed Barbashev to deflect a Kaedan Korczak point shot over Wolf to give Vegas a 4-1 lead.

Late in the third period, with Hanley in the box for cross-checking, Marner got position on Bahl on a rush, received a pass from Stone, then deked and tucked the puck past a sprawling Wolf to make it 5-1 Golden Knights.

Second period shots were 10-4 Golden Knights. 5v5 scoring chances were 12-2 Golden Knights and high-dangers were 4-0 Golden Knights.

Devin Cooley came into the game in relief to open the third period.

Vegas added a sixth goal on an extra third period power play. With Nazem Kadri in the box, Vegas executed their Eichel-Stone-Hertl passing sequence. Cooley made a nice save on Hertl’s initial shot from the slot, so Stone tucked in the rebound for Vegas’ third power play goal to make it a 6-1 Vegas lead.

Vegas held on for a 6-1 victory on home ice.

Third period shots were 10-9 Flames. 5v5 scoring chances were 12-6 Flames and high-dangers were 5-4 Flames.

Go back and look at the five-on-five goals the Flames gave up. You’ll find they’re preceded by some really sloppy play in their own zone. Bad passes, bad reads and overall bad positioning. In short: the Flames were bad in their own end, and it made it really tough for them to get out of their own end and do anything offensively with speed. Their penalty kill struggled against a good power play. Their power play couldn’t generate very much after their first goal.

In short: the Flames made way too many mistakes, to the point where their goaltending couldn’t bail them out and they couldn’t out-score their mistakes either.

The Flames have had bad outings in Vegas, but this was among their worst.

Huberdeau scored a goal, so we’ll give it to him by default.

That third Vegas goal, Stone’s back-door tap to give them a 3-1 lead late in the first period, was off yet another defensive miscue and seemed like an indicator that the Flames were not going to have a good outing.

There were two fights in the first period: Ryan Lomberg fought Colton Sissions in response to Sissons’ hit on Zayne Parekh on Tuesday night. Adam Klapka fought Jeremy Lauzon after Klapka crunched Zach Whitehead along the end-boards.

Join Jordan and Mike from the In The Dome podcast right after the game for After Burner!

The Flames (1-5-0) are headed home. They host the Winnipeg Jets on Monday night at the Saddledome.

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