The Calgary Flames need more out of their power play.
Heading into Tuesday’s meeting with the New York Islanders, the Flames were near the very bottom of the NHL’s power play rankings. At key times, the power play has failed to be a positive difference-maker for the Flames.
But on Tuesday night, a third period power play goal by Rasmus Andersson helped get the game to overtime. The Flames ended up winning in a shootout by a 2-1 score.
Following the game, Andersson was asked what worked on their power play – their only man advantage of the night.
“I think we moved the puck pretty well and we shot them to break him down,” said Andersson. “And then, then I think Backs makes a great play. He gets the box down and he makes a play to Pospy, you know, Naz one-touches it to me and it’s in the net. But I think it all starts with, you know, we’re shooting it. We’re trying to bury the box and then we can move it quick up top. And as you can see, I mean, he, he didn’t see anything on my goal and basically shot in the middle of the net and it went in and it’s because of the quick puck movement. And then if we can string that together over a longer period of time, we’ll be just fine.”
The Flames’ goal was the result of a really effective 11 seconds of rapid-fire puck movement, shooting and puck retrieval from the second power play unit of Mikael Backlund (“Backs”), Martin Pospisil (“Pospy”), Nazem Kadri (“Naz”), Andrei Kuzmenko and Andersson. And this 11 seconds paid off some work they did earlier in the shift establishing the shots – prior to this 11 seconds, both Backlund and Kuzmenko fired shots on Semyon Varlamov, which likely contributed to the defenders’ tendency to cheat down below the hash marks to defend the passes around the net-front area – “bury the box,” as Andersson mentioned.
Let’s break down the sequence that led to the goal, with super-fun arrows added!
Backlund skates down below the face-off circle and throws a pass through the slot (past Pospisil, who doesn’t touch it in this set play) to Kadri.
Kadri passes the puck quickly to Andersson at the point. Andersson subsequently passes it right back to Kadri.
With ample space to shoot, Kadri fires the puck on net. It hits Islanders defender Alexander Romanov and bounces to his right.
Backlund chases down the rebound and holds onto the puck. The Islanders’ penalty kill box drifts down towards Backlund. He passes to Pospisil in the centre of that box.
Pospisil very briefly holds the puck, then shuffles it across to Kadri. (This movement feels like a variation of Backlund’s original pass through the slot.)
Kadri immediately “one-touches” the puck to Andersson at the point. Notice in goal, Varlamov is just starting to move towards Kadri when Kadri begins to pass to Andersson.
Varlamov has already committed to his movement towards Kadri to his left, so he’s left fairly helpless when Andersson begins to shoot.
The Flames’ power play isn’t where the club wants it to be. But you can see on plays like this how the group thinks they can play when they execute. There’s nothing overly fancy about his goal: just simple, quick, well-executed puck movement that gets the goaltender moving and opens up shooting lanes.
Following the game, head coach Ryan Huska credited his special teams (and his club’s goaltender) for being the difference. He noted that the power play was moving the puck.
“That was one of the big things for it,” said Huska. “And then we had guys willing to shoot the puck too tonight. So it would be nice to have a few more opportunities, but I’m happy that they were able to get something accomplished there tonight. And it’s a big moment too for us. We needed that goal.”
The Flames are back in action on Thursday night when they host the New York Rangers.

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