On Saturday, the Calgary Flames headed to Winnipeg to face the Jets for their fifth outing of the pre-season. For the second consecutive road game, they were a bit clunky in the first period and couldn’t dig themselves out of that hole.

The Flames lost 4-2 to Winnipeg to run their exhibition record to 2-3-0.

The Jets got on the board just after the five minute mark on a weird play. Walker Duehr carried the puck into the zone and was intercepted and steered towards the far boards by Yan Kuznetsov. Duehr chucked the puck on netminder Devin Cooley. Cooley blocked the puck, but it ricocheted off him, hit Brayden Pachal (who was tangling with Brayden Yager) and into the Flames net to make it 1-0 Jets.

A little later, the Jets padded their lead. Justin Kirkland blocked a shot in the Flames zone, but afterwards the Jets recovered the puck, leading to Yager feeding Nikita Chibrikov in the slot for a quick pass and one-timer past Cooley to make it 2-0 Jets.

The Flames answered back a few minutes later, though, on a power play. Zayne Parekh fired a point shot that deflected in off a Jets defender who was battling with Adam Klapka out front, and that puck got past Eric Comrie to make it a 2-1 hockey game.

But the Jets responded back before the end of the period with the eventual game-winner. The Flames got caught up ice on a rush chance that activated their defenders. The Jets rushed back the other way as the Flames scambled to get back to break things up. It led to Jaret Anderson-Dolan throwing the puck to the net-front area for a redirect by Parker Ford past Cooley to make it a 3-1 Jets lead.

Midway through the second, the Jets added some insurance to make it 4-1 on the power play. Neal Pionk fired a point shot with some bodies in front of Cooley.

Early in the third period, the Flames scored to cut the deficit to 4-2. On that sequence, Pachal’s point shot was stopped by Comrie, but Matvei Gridin chipped the rebound past the Jets netminder to cut the home side’s lead to two goals.

But the Flames couldn’t get any closer and they ended up losing this exhibition game to Winnipeg.

This game was the definition of a mixed bag.

In net, Cooley can’t really be blamed on any of the goals – you can see things his defenders could’ve done differently on every single one – but you would probably like your prospective backup goalie to make a big save to keep the time in the game. He didn’t allow any bad goals, but he also didn’t rob the Jets on any occasions… and he kinda needed to with the way the Flames played in the opening period.

In terms of skaters, Rory Kerins, Matvei Gridin, Adam Klapka and Zayne Parekh stood out nicely. The three forwards did some nice things at even strength, while Parekh made some nice offensive zone plays, especially on the power play.

On the minus side: Martin Pospisil was minus-1 and took three pretty head-scratching penalties. With so many new, young faces in the organization, Pospisil needs to be better to help the youngsters along.

The Flames’ lineup, via Derek Wills:

Winnipeg’s lineup via Mitchell Clinton:

The Flames head on the road on Monday night for an exhibition game in the Emerald City to face the Seattle Kraken.

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