History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme sometimes.

On Tuesday night, the Calgary Flames played the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Flames played some good hockey. They made some good plays. They scored three goals, lighting the lamp more than twice for fourth time this season.

Joel Farabee finally scored his first goal of the season after creating oodles of chances but being snake-bit. 2023 first-round pick Sam Honzek scored his first NHL goal after several games of impressive play on the Flames’ shutdown line.

In short, there were a lot of positives on display for the Flames at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday night.

But the Flames still managed to find a way to lose the hockey game, dropping a 4-3 decision to the Leafs in ways that probably seem quite familiar to observers of the hockey club.

“Well, I liked our start,” said Flames head coach Ryan Huska following the game. “I thought we had a good first period, then we got into penalty trouble again. So that’s one thing for sure that I thought we gave them a little bit of momentum off that. And I think we struggled to move the puck from our zone and out tonight. I think that’s where we got ourselves into most problems.”

The Flames led for big chunks of this hockey game, leading 1-0 after a Morgan Frost goal and then 2-1 after Farabee’s goal. However, two late-period goals off own-zone turnovers were what hurt the Flames in Toronto.

With the Flames leading 2-1, Mikael Backlund was stripped of the puck by Toronto’s William Nylander in the defensive zone. Nylander fed the puck to Matthew Knies, who waited out Dustin Wolf and tucked the puck into the Flames net to tie the game at 2-2 with 35 seconds left in the second period.

(Credit where it’s due: Backlund later made a smart play to create a turnover in the third period, setting up Honzek’s goal to tie the game at 3-3.)

With the game tied 3-3, MacKenzie Weegar made two attempts to clear the defensive zone with the Leafs pressing late in the third period. His first attempt, a dump-out made under duress from the corner of the zone, was intercepted by Toronto’s Jake McCabe. A second, more desperate attempt inside the blueline wasn’t successful, and John Tavares instead swatted the puck to set up a passing play between Max Domi and Knies that ended with a Domi goal to give Toronto a 4-3 lead with just 2:04 left in regulation.

The Flames also lost the special teams battle with the Leafs by a 1-0 margin, with Toronto’s power play goal a product of a tough break on an attempted clearing by Rasmus Andersson and some scrambly defensive play in response. Andersson’s dump-out attempt was swatted down by Auston Matthews, leading to a frenzy of chances around the net-front area and a Knies goal to give Toronto a 3-2 lead at the time.

The Flames are finding ways to score goals right now. They don’t need to play absolutely mistake-free hockey. But they really need to cut back on the big mistakes with the puck during big moments.

The Flames don’t need to be perfect. But if they want to start piling up some wins, they need to be better than they were against Toronto.

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