The Calgary Flames headed into Tuesday’s regular season home finale needing to take care of their own business and get some help from the out-of-town scoreboard – in at least one of two places – to stay alive in the Western Conference playoff race.

Unfortunately, the Flames got no help from anybody and what they did in their game against the Vegas Golden Knights was no longer of consequence in the playoff picture. (They ended up winning 5-4 via a shootout after their standard third period comeback.)

The Minnesota Wild scored with 20.9 seconds remaining in their game with the Anaheim Ducks, tying the game at 2-2 and forcing overtime. With that point, they ensured that the Flames could do no better than tying them in the standings at 96 points. And with the Wild holding the first tiebreaker – regulation wins – the Wild captured a playoff berth before their overtime period even began. As of 8:34 p.m. MT, the Flames could not catch Minnesota.

(The Wild won in overtime, giving themselves a bit of a buffer.)

Elsewhere, the St. Louis Blues played a pretty strong game at home against the Utah Hockey Club. The Blues led 4-0 after the first period and didn’t look back, holding on for a 6-1 regulation win over Utah. St. Louis’ win ensured that the Flames could do no better than tying them in the standings at 96 points. And the Blues’ regulation win ensured that the Flames could do no better than tie them on the first tiebreaker (regulation wins), and the Blues held a hefty lead in the second tiebreaker (regulation and overtime wins), so they clinched a playoff berth when the horn blew to close out their win over Utah at 8:47 p.m. MT.

The Flames’ official elimination from the playoff race ends a really fun stretch of hockey, featuring the Flames playing in some really high-stakes, dramatic games and not wilting under the pressure. While this is their third consecutive season that will end without post-season hockey, the Flames made it a much closer race for the wild card spots than anyone expected them to.

In 2022-23, the final year under Darryl Sutter, the Flames missed the playoffs by two points. Last season, following a pretty radical in-season roster turnover that saw several longtime Flames on expiring contracts traded away, the Flames missed the playoffs by 18 points.

Regardless of how far the Flames end up from the final playoff spot – and it’ll be somewhere between zero and two points – they did so after making (at least) a 13 point improvement over the 2023-24 season in the standings. It’ll be fascinating to see if the Flames can continue to build upon the first season of their roster retool process in 2025-26 and beyond.

Perhaps we haven’t yet seen the final Stanley Cup playoff games played in the Saddledome.

The Flames conclude their 2024-25 regular season on Thursday night against the Los Angeles Kings.

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