Instant Reaction: Flames fall short against Avalanche

Early in the second period, Ryan Strome took a high-sticking minor. On the resulting Avalanche power play, a bit of high-low puck movement ended up with Nazem Kadri with a lane across the net-front area. He threw a pass to Necas, and his one-timer beat Sergeev for a power play marker and a 2-0 Colorado lead.

A little later, the Avalanche scored off the rush. Once again, the Avalanche entered the zone with numbers and speed. The Flames got a bit crossed-up in their defensive coverage against the rush, and a nice pass found Artturi Lehkonen all alone in the slot. He fired the puck past Sergeev to give Colorado a 3-0 lead.

The Avalanche added another one a bit later. Maxim Tsyplakov whiffed on a pass at the point and the Avalanche got an odd-man rush the other way. Gabriel Landeskog tried to throw a clean pass across to Brock Nelson, but the pass was partially deflected by Zach Whitecloud, fluttered towards Nelson anyway, and got redirected in mid-air by Nelson past Sergeev to go up 4-0.

But the Flames busted up Mackenzie Blackwood’s shutout attempt with 29:10 left in regulation. Mikael Backlund made a nice pass to set up Joel Farabee in the net-front area for a scoring chance. Blackwood made the initial save but Farabee slid his own rebound into the home team’s net to cut the Colorado lead to 4-1.

Early in the third period, the Flames got one back. Ryan Strome jumped on a Colorado turnover in their zone, and made a nice pass to Martin Pospisil, at the far post. Pospisil didn’t miss this one, scoring on Blackwood to cut Colorado’s lead to 4-2.

But a couple minutes later, the Avalanche got that goal back. They cycled the puck in the Flames’ zone, and a point shot by Makar was deflected by Lehkonen past Sergeev to make it a 5-2 Colorado lead.

The Avalanche held on for the win.

Why the Flames lost

Let’s call a spade a spade: this was a scheduled loss. The Avalanche have been idle since Wednesday. The Flames played on Friday and travelled. Oh, and if you look at the two respective rosters, one had an obvious structural advantage.

We’ll give the Flames credit for battling, but their defensive details were rough at bad times, particularly their rush defence. The Flames allowed quite a few gaps, and the Avalanche exploited them.

Red Warrior

Y’know what? Arsenii Sergeev was put in against a tough opponent, and he battled hard in this one. It’s hard to really fault on him the five goals he allowed, and he saw a lot of high-octane chances against that he kept out of the Calgary net.

Turning point

The Avalanche scored three consecutive goals in the second period, turning a 1-0 game into a 4-0 game and functionally taking the Flames out of this one.

Flames lineup

The Flames looked like this against Colorado:

Joel Farabee – Mikael Backlund [C] – Matt Coronato
Matvei Gridin – Martin Pospisil – Ryan Strome
Yegor Sharangovich – Morgan Frost – Aydar Suniev
Brennan Othmann – Jonathan Castagna – Adam Klapka

Kevin Bahl – Simon Nemec
Jake Middleton [A] – Zach Whitecloud [A]
Yan Kuznetsov – Zayne Parekh

Arsenii Sergeev started in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. The healthy extras were Joel Hanley and William Strömgren. Jonathan Huberdeau, Sam Honzek, Devin Cooley and Brennan Othmann.

This and that

Zayne Parekh earned an assist on Martin Pospisil’s goal. That’s his first even-strength point of the season.

After Burner

Join Mike Gould and myself right after the game for After Burner!

Up next

The Flames (6-8-0) are headed west. They visit the San Jose Sharks on Monday night in the second game of the road trip.

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