The Calgary Flames began their 2024-25 season with a wild game against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena.

That game was emotional, it was physical, and it featured a ton of push-back from a Flames club many in the hockey world predicted to finish near the bottom of the National Hockey League’s standings. They won by a 6-5 score in overtime.

35 games later, the Flames closed out the calendar year of 2024 in a very similar fashion, this time with a 3-1 win over the Canucks in a wild game at the Scotiabank Saddledome.

In many ways, it was a statement victory for the Flames.

Home ice has been important for the Flames on two fronts.

They haven’t been a particularly great road team this year, and so they’ve managed to stay very much in the playoff race based on their home record – more on that later. Tuesday’s win was their 13th home win in 20 home games. Only five teams have more wins at home than the Flames: Toronto, Vegas, Carolina, Winnipeg and Dallas.

“I thought it was a great game,” said head coach Ryan Huska. “That’s the most emotion that we’ve had in a game, and I thought our team fed off the building, which was a fun game to be a part of, for sure. It says something about the group, particularly that second period when the tensions were high.”

The other part of it is that the Flames are a team that’s still building itself up and refining its play and its systems. They’re a work in progress. Finding success at home allows them the confidence to go out and try to play that style on the road… and gives them a bit of breathing room in the cases where they don’t have success away from home. When you’re a good home team, your losing skids can only last so long.

A criticism of teams, as they get younger, is that they can be pushed around a bit by more veteran opponents, and that sometimes adding a bit of physicality and emotion to a contest can get that sort of team away from their game plan. (Young and soft is the derisive way some rebuilding teams are often described.) After all, how many times in the past have we seen teams start chasing hits and scraps rather than staying within their system and playing their game? (Heck, we’ve seen this from the Flames in earlier vintages, before they opted to get younger.)

Well, against Vancouver, things got chippy and emotional, but the Flames didn’t lose their heads.

“I think there’s always a fine line,” said Huska. “We always want them to play with passion and emotion. If they do it and they’re able to stay on the right side of the line, that’s awesome. I thought tonight they were really good, making sure that they didn’t cross that line and put us in a bad spot. So I’m really pleased with how they handled themselves tonight.”

At one point, the Canucks had five players in the penalty box – after two fighting majors, a roughing minor, a tripping minor and a cross-checking minor – and the Flames had three. (Post-game, Nazem Kadri joked that the penalty box can probably sit two or three comfortably.) The Flames stood up for each other, even without a traditional enforcer on their roster, but they didn’t get dirty or stray from what made them effective.

Do the Flames have high-end firepower that can steal games? Nope. And even against a depleted Canucks team – currently without Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes – they needed a full team effort to get the W.

Dustin Wolf made 23 saves. The two goals the Flames got past Kevin Lankinen were products of two pretty nice even strength sequences – a strong second effort from Jakob Pelletier after an initial breakaway chance leading to Connor Zary’s goal, and a strong passing sequence finished by Nazem Kadri. MacKenzie Weegar earned zero points, but made two strong passes to set up the rushes, and earned kudos from his teammates for stepping up to Noah Juulsen after his dangerous trip on Mikael Backlund in the second period.

It wasn’t a perfect game – the Flames lost the special teams battle despite having a five-on-three advantage for over a minute – but enough parts of their game were working that they managed to beat a divisional foe.

A disclaimer: the way that the NHL sorts the official standings is based first on points and then on other things. As Dec. 31 ended, the Flames sat a point ahead of the Canucks for the final wildcard playoff spot in the Western Conference, with the Flames having played one more game than Vancouver. (If you sort by points percentage, the Flames switch spots with the Canucks.)

The record books will state that as the sun rose to begin 2025, the Flames were sitting in a playoff spot. Just like everyone predicted in October.

“Unbelievable,” said Kadri to the assembled media with a grin post-game. “Who all had that here? Anyone project that? Anyone project that here? No? Experts. But listen, we fight till the end. That’s kind of how it works. There’s a lot of year to play. It’s gonna be great going in the New Year in a spot. We’d like to build on that.”

“We’re not here to be in a playoff spot January 1st, and then not when the season’s over,” said Ryan Lomberg, who fought twice in the win. “So it’s great. We’re in one now, and we’ve got to do what we can to stay in one and continue to climb here because obviously we’re proving people wrong, but we’re not proving ourselves wrong. We know what we’re capable of, especially when we play the right way. So it was good 2024, this fraction of the season, and we’re definitely looking forward to continuing where we left off.”

“We’re happy with the way our game is trending,” said Huska. “And maybe the most important thing for me is the players understand the style that we have to play. And they’ve really bought into it. And it’s not an easy way to play, but they realize when they are playing that way and when they’re not now, which is important for me. So it’s turning not into a coach’s message anymore. It’s more about the players, which is a great thing.”

The Flames are back in action on Thursday night when they host the Utah Hockey Club.