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Instant Reaction: Flames’ dress rehearsal goes poorly against Canucks
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images
Ryan Pike
Oct 1, 2025, 23:46 EDTUpdated: Oct 2, 2025, 01:46 EDT
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Welcome to Instant Reaction, where we give you our instant reaction to tonight’s Calgary Flames game and ask our readers to do the same in the comments section below!
Yeesh, thank goodness that’s over, eh?
On Wednesday night, the Calgary Flames welcomed the Vancouver Canucks to town for their second-last pre-season contest of this fall. And the game went very poorly for the home side, with Vancouver scoring early and often.
The Flames lost by a 8-1 score. The main positives for the Flames were that they likely learned some tough lessons, and that this game didn’t count in the standings.

The rundown

The first few minutes were fairly even, but the Canucks broke the game open just shy of seven minutes into the first period after Brock Boeser snuck behind the Flames defence in the neutral zone, received a pass from Quinn Hughes, and then beat Ivan Prosvetov with a breakaway shot to go up 1-0.
Jonathan Huberdeau had a breakaway chance that was stopped by Kevin Lankinen.
Then three goals in a span of less than 90 seconds blew the game open entirely.
With Kevin Bahl in the penalty box, Elias Pettersson cranked a one-timer past Prosvetov to make it 2-0 Canucks.
Off a face-off win in the Flames zone, a Tyler Myers point shot wobbled in off a Flames player (Nazem Kadri) in front of the net to make it 3-0 Canucks.
The Flames drew a penalty, but on the ensuing power play they couldn’t hold onto the puck and the Canucks had an odd-man rush. Derek Forbort, notable former Flame, finished off the rush by beating Prosvetov to makes it 4-0 Canucks.
30 seconds into the second period, the Flames broke Lankinen’s shutout bid. Yegor Sharangovich fired a bad angle shot on net. Lankinen made the initial stop, but seemed to lose his balance and he fell down. Joel Farabee jumped on the loose rebound and put it into the net past the sprawling Lankinen to make it 4-1.
(The Flames were also quite off-side on the prior zone entry, but there are no coach’s challenges during pre-season.)
But the Canucks scored again soon after, with a nice give-and-go passing play between Jake DeBrusk and Max Sasson finished by a Sasson shot that beat Prosvetov inside the far post to make it 5-1 Canucks.
Devin Cooley came into the game midway through the second period and immediately faced a Vancouver power play. Aatu Räty beat him short-side, low stick-side, to make it a 6-1 Canucks lead.
Cooley made a nice stop on (Elias) Pettersson on a penalty shot later in the period.
Midway through the third period, Vancouver generated an odd-man rush and Hughes, jumping into the rush, finished off the passing sequence with a back-hander past Cooley to give the Canucks a 7-1 lead.
Sasson scored a short-handed goal on an odd-man shorthanded rush with Arshdeep Bains to give Vancouver an 8-1 lead.
That’s how it ended.

How did it go?

Uh, poorly.
The Flames were pretty sloppy early and their details weren’t there. That led to Boeser’s breakaway goal, Pettersson’s power play one-timer, and Forbort’s shorthanded goal. The third goal was a weird deflection off a point shot from a Flame. It’s hard to really fault the goaltenders on three or four oft those early Vancouver goals. The fifth and sixth ones weren’t great.
But the Flames really didn’t make life all that easy on their netminders. They looked disconnected and sloppy, and the result was a lot of high-quality chances on the sticks of some of Vancouver’s best players against prospective backup goaltenders. That’s rarely a recipe for success.
Neither goalie was great. But essentially zero parts of the Flames game looked all that good either.

This and that

Calgary’s lines, via Pat Steinberg:
Farabee-Kadri-Sharangovich
Huberdeau-Frost-Coronato
Gridin-Backlund-Coleman
Zary-Kerins-Pospisil
Hanley-Weegar
Bahl-Andersson
Parekh-Pachal
Ivan Prosvetov started in net, backed up by Devin Cooley. Cooley entered the game midway through the second period.
Pospisil looked to be hurt late in the second period and didn’t play in the third period.
Huberdeau collided hard with Lankinen late in the third period and left the game.
Vancouver’s lines via Brandon Batchelor:
DeBrusk – E.Pettersson (40) – Boeser
O’Connor – Blueger – Garland
LaBate – Räty – Sherwood
Bains – Sasson – Karlsson
Hughes – Hronzek
M.Pettersson – Myers
Forbort – Mancini
Kevin Lankinen started in net, backed up by Nikita Tolopilo. Lankinen played the whole game.

Up next

The Flames close out their exhibition calendar on Friday night when they host the Winnipeg Jets.

This article is brought to you by Platinum Mitsubishi

This article is a Presentation of Platinum Mitsubishi, family owned and operated by lifelong Calgarians. Home of the best warranty in the business with ten year warranties available. Check out the showroom at 2720 Barlow Trail NE or online at www.mitsu.ca

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