The Calgary Flames came into the final game of their season with only draft lottery positioning at stake.

With a rookie netminder between the pipes, playing on pretty short notice due to an illness to Devin Cooley, the Flames did what they’ve done for much of the season: not score a ton of goals, get good goaltending, and play their usual smart, structured game. Facing a playoff-bound Los Angeles Kings club that found out midway through the contest that the game would have no standings impact for them, the Flames skated to a 3-1 victory to conclude their regular season.

The big story of the game was the impressive performance by Arsenii Sergeev, up on an emergency recall and making his first-ever NHL appearance – albeit in a building where he’s played quite a bit of hockey for the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers.

“He was really good,” said head coach Ryan Huska. “Happy for him. Quite the moment for him. Showed up this morning with really not knowing what was going on or what was happening and went from this maybe you might skate this morning to maybe you might back up to you’re gonna start. So pretty excited young man. I think he did a great job.”

Sergeev made 27 stops on 28 shots to earn his first NHL victory in his first NHL appearance. Coincidentally, his NHL debut came about a year after he led the Penn State Nittany Lions to the NCAA’s Frozen Four and three years after Dustin Wolf stood on his head in his Game 82 debut victory over the San Jose Sharks.

Huska wasn’t surprised that Sergeev had a strong debut.

“Well you know, goalies are funny,” said Huska. “Their first games are always usually really good ones. I think in the American League’s first he made 52 saves. So, you kind of had a feeling that he was going to have a good night tonight.”

Sergeev made a bunch of highlight reel stops against the Kings, but the best of the bunch was probably midway through the second period, where he managed to get a stick on a shot from Trevor Moore after the puck rebounded off the end-boards.

“Oh, my God, I get so lucky, too,” said Sergeev. “There was a couple moments where it was like empty net, and I was like, ‘oh, my God, oh, my God, please don’t score.'”

Sergeev won’t have long to relish his first NHL victory, as he’s headed to Colorado to join the Wranglers for the final two games of their season.

The Flames entered the game with two players having scored 20 goals on the season, as Morgan Frost had 21 and Blake Coleman got to 20 against Colorado on Tuesday night.

Well, Joel Farabee entered the game with 19 goals on the campaign and managed to get his 20th… though he waited until the literal last minute of the season to pot an empty-netter.

“If you saw our whole bench, everybody was leaning to try to get it to roll in,” chuckled Huska. “So that’s, again, you have a good group of people and they want to see teammates have success. And that’s a milestone for a lot of guys. To get 20 goals in the NHL is a pretty good thing. It’s nice to see Morgan get there. This year it’s nice to see Joel get through. This year it’s nice to see Blake get there.”

Finally, this was the 1,521th – and final – regular season game for Kings captain Anze Kopitar. He received a tribute video during a first period media timeout, then following the game the Flames’ entire bench – and several players who weren’t even dressed for the game – came out to shake Kopitar’s hand to pay their respects to a legendary player.

Huska wasn’t surprised to see his team be so respectful to Kopitar.

“No, not at all,” said Huska. “I mean, they get it. That’s the one beauty thing about hockey players. They all understand and they get it when someone’s had a career like he has. They look at him as kind of one of their role models too for a lot of the younger guys that we have on our team.”

The Kings are off to the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Flames are off to the off-season.