Pals, on Tuesday night, the Calgary Flames face the Columbus Blue Jackets in the fourth game of their five game eastern road trip. Through their first three games, the Flames have won just one game. That is, unfortunately, not an uncommon result for them away from the Saddledome.

In fact, the Flames have captured exactly one out of every three available points away from home this season, with their .333 points percentage representing the worst road record in the National Hockey League.

Now, before we go too far, let’s establish a few things. First, home teams win more than road teams for a bunch of reasons. Second, the Flames’ rough road record this season isn’t their worst road performance in the Three Point Era (2005-06 to present), which was a .292 record in 2012-13. And three teams last season posted worst road records than the Flames have now: Chicago (.305), Nashville (.305) and San Jose (.317).

But while the Flames’ road record isn’t all-time bad, it’s not good. And if you’re a fan that was hoping for playoff hockey this spring, the Flames’ struggles away from home are a prime reason why that’s a very faint possibility.

So why are the Flames struggling away from home?

The Flames have the NHL’s worst power play through 45 games, converting on 13.6% of their man advantages. Their home/road split is skewed towards home ice: 15.4% at home and 12.0% on the road. (And special teams aren’t really a place you would expect line-matching to matter.)

The Flames simply aren’t generating enough on the road on their power play: per Natural Stat Trick, per 60 minutes of power play time, the Flames are generating 1.07 fewer expected goals, 3.26 fewer scoring chances and 2.06 fewer high-danger scoring chances on the road compared to on home ice.

Per 60 minutes of five-on-five time, the Flames are generating 0.30 fewer expected goals, 4.84 fewer scoring chances and 3.1 fewer high-danger scoring chances on the road compared to at home.

We’re willing to concede that line-matching probably does factor in a bit here, as the Flames’ five-on-five attack tends to rely on momentum building from shift-to-shift (and from line-to-line), and having one of their lines get a bad match-up can be really disruptive to the team’s entire scheme.

Here are Dustin Wolf’s home/road splits this season:

Wolf had similarly skewed stats in his rookie year, too: 20-8-4 with a 2.33 goals against average and .921 save percentage at home, and 9-8-4 with a 3.13 goals against average and .891 save percentage at home. But his road stats are noticeably worse this season than last.

But consider the Flames, in general…

On a per-60 basis during five-on-five, the Flames allow 0.03 more expected goals and 1.18 more scoring chances on the road compared to on home ice. (They do, however, allow 0.58 fewer high-danger chances per 60 on the road than at home.) But regardless, for a team that doesn’t score a ton, the Flames flat-out need to be a stingy defensive bunch and try to grind out close games.

But when you’re a little bit looser defensively on the road, and you don’t generate a ton offensively at five-on-five or special teams, it’s tough to win. Again, we’re willing to point to line-matching as a contributing factor here.

So remember how line-matching doesn’t really matter on special teams? Consider this: the Flames’ penalty kill is better on the road than at home, both in terms of results and process. Per 60 minutes of penalty-killing time, the Flames allow 0.66 fewer expected goals, 3.18 fewer scoring chances and 4.87 fewer high-danger chances on the road compared at home.

The Flames are not a perfect hockey team. They have flaws. But on home ice, they’ve managed to play pretty well and find ways to work around those flaws. Unfortunately, they just haven’t been able to do that away from home, and it’s led to them having some serious struggles in every arena not named the Saddledome.

We’ll see if they can turn things around in the back half of this season.