On Sunday, the Calgary Flames played an exhibition game at home against Edmonton. They didn’t look particularly good. On Tuesday, they played a game against the Seattle Kraken and looked much better than they did on Sunday.

The Flames skated well, made some nice plays and managed to out-score their opponents, beating the Kraken by a 4-1 score.

The Flames opened the scoring in the first period, as Yegor Sharangovich deflected a Hunter Brzustewicz point shot past Kraken netminder Philipp Grubauer to give the Flames a 1-0 lead.

Shortly after that goal, though, Mitchell Stephens received a pass from Mason Marchment in the offensive zone, and beat Dustin Wolf with a backhander to tie the game at 1-1.

In the second period, though, the Flames grabbed the lead again off a pretty nice little play. Rory Kerins carried the puck into the Kraken zone on a power play rush, but lost the handle on it. Connor Zary nudged the puck back to Kerins, and Kerins beat Grubauer to make it 2-1.

Early in the third period, the Flames added some insurance. Morgan Frost made a gorgeous cross-zone pass down low to Matt Coronato, who fired the puck over top of Kraken netminder Matt Murray to give the Flames a 3-1 lead.

Sam Morton added an empty-netter to make it a 4-1 victory.

The Flames looked much closer to the team we expect to see this season, and they seemed to get better as the game went along. They dressed five first-round picks and several NHL regulars, yeah, you’d expect them to look halfway decent. But the players you would hope to stand out did.

Zayne Parekh, in particular, made a lot of really smart little plays in all three zones. He made a couple passes that led to reactions from his teammates that were along the lines of “Hey, I didn’t know you could do that.” He’s still got some yips in his game – he was a bit too much of a spectator on Seattle’s first period goal – but the shape of his game seems to be progressing nicely.

Flames lineup:

Huberdeau – Frost – Coronato
Zary – Kirkland – Klapka
Gridin – Kerins – Sharangovich
Stromgren – Morton – Honzek

Bahl – Parekh
Solovyov – Pachal
Kuznetsov – Brzustewicz

Dustin Wolf started in net, backed up by Owen Say. Say came in to relieve Wolf to begin the third period.

Seattle lineup via Deep Sea Hockey:

Philipp Grubauer started in net, backed up by Matt Murray. Murray came into the game midway through.

The Flames are headed to Abbotsford on Wednesday to visit the Vancouver Canucks.

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