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Instant Reaction: Flames lose uneven outing against Jets in pre-season finale
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images
Ryan Pike
Oct 3, 2025, 23:53 EDTUpdated: Oct 4, 2025, 00:23 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!
Well, that was much better than Wednesday.
The Calgary Flames did not give up eight goals against the Winnipeg Jets on Friday night at the ‘Dome. And they were, overall, a much better and cohesive group than they were against Vancouver. But the Flames remain a bit of a work in progress and couldn’t hold onto a three goal lead that they earned midway through the game.
The Flames ended up losing to the Jets by a 5-4 score in a shootout.

The rundown

Midway through the first period, the Flames opened the scoring on a nice bit of cycling and puck movement. Nazem Kadri slid the puck to Zayne Parekh at the right point. Parekh threw the puck around the boards to Joel Farabee behind the Jets net. Farabee slid the puck to Adam Klapka, who skated to the side of the net and found Kadri in front, who potted the puck past Connor Hellebuyck to make it 1-0 Flames.
Awhile later, the Flames scored again. This time, Kevin Bahl’s shot from the left point was partially blocked by a Jets defender… but Matvei Gridin whizzed past the Jets player, nabbed the loose puck and slid it between Hellebuyck’s pads to make it 2-0 Flames.
The Jets managed to get one back a little later, as a Haydn Fleury point shot was inadvertently redirected off Morgan Frost’s padding on a shot block attempt and changed directions, fooling Dustin Wolf and cutting Calgary’s lead to 2-1.
But before the first period ended, the Flames responded, with a Joel Hanley shot from the point – with oodles of bodies between him and the Jets cage – found twine just inside the post past Hellebuyck to give the Flames a 3-1 advantage.
Kadri scored his second of the game early in the second period on an interesting sequence. Bahl jumped into the rush and executed a great give-and-go play with Adam Klapka running interference. Hellebuyck was completely fooled, went for a poke check… and Bahl passed back to Kadri to get the freebie to extend the Calgary lead to 4-1.
But a while later, the Jets got one back. Luke Schenn’s initial shot was stopped by Wolf, but Gustav Nyquist had position on a Flames defender and jumped on the rebound, whacking it past Wolf to make it a 4-2 Flames edge.
But the Jets scored a couple to draw even. First, Bahl couldn’t corral a loose puck after a failed zone exit and the Jets jumped all over that puck. A couple passes later and Alex Iafallo roofed the puck past Wolf to cut the lead to 4-3.
And the Jets kept pressing and with a few minutes left, Parker Ford deflected a Logan Stanley point shot past Wolf to tie the game at 4-4.
This one went to overtime, so the shootout had to decide things.
Gabe Vilardi, Josh Morrissey and Tannear Pearson scored for the Jets, while Justin Kirkland and Rasmus Andersson scored in the shootout for the Flames. The Jets won 5-4.
Pearson’s goal was a weird one, as it went up into the air and blooped in off Wolf as he tried to catch it out of the air.

How did it go?

Well, the good news is that the Flames scored a bunch of goals, several of them pretty nice ones, and they looked much more energetic, engaged and cohesive than they were on Wednesday. They didn’t get run out of their own rink, and that’s superb.
But as a preview of the 2025-26 season, this one was a bit worrying. Yeah, they were playing a really good Jets team. But after getting that 4-1 lead, the Flames didn’t do a very good job of managing the game. They weren’t particularly great structurally in their own end and as a result, the end of the game was way more dramatic than it needed to be.
Most Flames looked really sharp. But they were, as a group, pretty clunky, and they have some work to do when the games start to count.

This and that

Calgary’s lines, via Pat Steinberg:
Farabee-Kadri-Klapka
Gridin-Frost-Coronato
Zary-Backlund-Coleman
Lomberg-Kirkland-Sharangovich
Hanley-Weegar
Bahl-Andersson
Bean-Parekh
Dustin Wolf started in net, backed up by Devin Cooley. Wolf played the full game.
With Jonathan Huberdeau out day-to-day, Farabee subbed in for him on the top power play unit.
Winnipeg’s lines via Mike McIntyre:
Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Nyquist-Namestnikov-Perfetti
Niederreiter-Barron-Iafallo
Koepke-Ford-Pearson
Morrissey-DeMelo
Stanley-Pionk
Fleury-Schenn
Connor Hellebuyck started in net, backed up by Eric Comrie. Hellebuyck played the full game.

Up next

The Flames open their regular season schedule on Wednesday night in Edmonton against the Oilers.

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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