Instant Reaction: Flames lose uneven outing against Jets in pre-season finale

Awhile later, the Flames scored again. This time, Kevin Bahl’s shot from the left point was partially blocked by a Jets defender… but Matvei Gridin whizzed past the Jets player, nabbed the loose puck and slid it between Hellebuyck’s pads to make it 2-0 Flames.

The Jets managed to get one back a little later, as a Haydn Fleury point shot was inadvertently redirected off Morgan Frost’s padding on a shot block attempt and changed directions, fooling Dustin Wolf and cutting Calgary’s lead to 2-1.

But before the first period ended, the Flames responded, with a Joel Hanley shot from the point – with oodles of bodies between him and the Jets cage – found twine just inside the post past Hellebuyck to give the Flames a 3-1 advantage.

Kadri scored his second of the game early in the second period on an interesting sequence. Bahl jumped into the rush and executed a great give-and-go play with Adam Klapka running interference. Hellebuyck was completely fooled, went for a poke check… and Bahl passed back to Kadri to get the freebie to extend the Calgary lead to 4-1.

But a while later, the Jets got one back. Luke Schenn’s initial shot was stopped by Wolf, but Gustav Nyquist had position on a Flames defender and jumped on the rebound, whacking it past Wolf to make it a 4-2 Flames edge.

But the Jets scored a couple to draw even. First, Bahl couldn’t corral a loose puck after a failed zone exit and the Jets jumped all over that puck. A couple passes later and Alex Iafallo roofed the puck past Wolf to cut the lead to 4-3.

And the Jets kept pressing and with a few minutes left, Parker Ford deflected a Logan Stanley point shot past Wolf to tie the game at 4-4.

This one went to overtime, so the shootout had to decide things.

Gabe Vilardi, Josh Morrissey and Tannear Pearson scored for the Jets, while Justin Kirkland and Rasmus Andersson scored in the shootout for the Flames. The Jets won 5-4.

How did it go?

Well, the good news is that the Flames scored a bunch of goals, several of them pretty nice ones, and they looked much more energetic, engaged and cohesive than they were on Wednesday. They didn’t get run out of their own rink, and that’s superb.

But as a preview of the 2025-26 season, this one was a bit worrying. Yeah, they were playing a really good Jets team. But after getting that 4-1 lead, the Flames didn’t do a very good job of managing the game. They weren’t particularly great structurally in their own end and as a result, the end of the game was way more dramatic than it needed to be.

Most Flames looked really sharp. But they were, as a group, pretty clunky, and they have some work to do when the games start to count.

This and that

Calgary’s lines, via Pat Steinberg:

Farabee-Kadri-Klapka
Gridin-Frost-Coronato
Zary-Backlund-Coleman
Lomberg-Kirkland-Sharangovich

Hanley-Weegar
Bahl-Andersson
Bean-Parekh

Dustin Wolf started in net, backed up by Devin Cooley. Wolf played the full game.

With Jonathan Huberdeau out day-to-day, Farabee subbed in for him on the top power play unit.

Winnipeg’s lines via Mike McIntyre:

Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Nyquist-Namestnikov-Perfetti
Niederreiter-Barron-Iafallo
Koepke-Ford-Pearson

Morrissey-DeMelo
Stanley-Pionk
Fleury-Schenn

Connor Hellebuyck started in net, backed up by Eric Comrie. Hellebuyck played the full game.

Up next

The Flames open their regular season schedule on Wednesday night in Edmonton against the Oilers.