Flames’ Neal getting a little too familiar with dental work
Calgary’s crew thoroughly outplayed by NHL’s top team as slump continues
It’s almost alarming how familiar James Neal has become with the intricacies of dental surgery.
The Calgary Flames forward was back with his teammates at Tuesday’s morning skate at the Amalie Arena after missing Monday’s practice while he got dental work done because of the eight teeth he lost in this weekend’s game against the Vancouver Canucks.
It was a horrifying injury, and Neal spent a couple hours in the dentist’s chair Monday, but it wasn’t too big of a deal when the smoke cleared.
“It was fine, it’s something I’m used to,” Neal said. “I can’t even explain the hours I’ve logged in the dentist chair. For whatever reason, sticks hit me in the teeth, in the mouth,
“It’s part of the game, it happens. Hopefully not too much, but the main thing is my implants weren’t fractured, so that’s good news.”
Neal took a high stick from Canucks defenceman Alex Biega in the third-period of the teams’ Saturday night tilt and replays showed teeth flying out of his mouth.
It was a gruesome scene and while Neal believes he’s lost a mouthful of teeth six times in his career, this isn’t something where familiarity with the process makes it any easier.
“There’s nothing worse than going to the dentist, just the amount of needles that have to go into your gums, it kind of just ruins you for a few days,” Neal said. “You’re home to your bed and it’s just really hard to eat, just kind of smoothies and soft food.”
There was no going home and spending a week in bed for Neal this time. He returned to the ice before the end of the game against the Canucks and was scheduled to start against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday evening — just in case anyone was wondering whether Neal was tough, the answer is a resounding yes.
But there’s a long road ahead for Neal before he gets a full mouth of teeth back, and as a veteran of the process, he knows exactly what lies ahead.
That knowledge was part of the reason Neal kept the work he got done on his mouth to a minimum on Monday.
“I wasn’t going to go through another four hours of getting new teeth and then tonight I go out there and it all goes again,” Neal said. “I’ll wait until I get back home to Calgary to do the full works, but just (got a few things done Monday) to plug stuff up so nothing can go up there, no infections, and then just making sure my implants were still up there and still intact.”
And just so we’re totally clear about Neal understanding the long dental process that lies ahead, here he is explaining what he went through last year when he had a similar mouth injury:
“Last year, I got a stick really bad and it went right into my mouth and took out all my posts, so ripped out my gums,” Neal explained. “Had to get my gums re-sewn in the top, so had to get surgery for that and after that heals you get all the stitches out across and then they put all the implants in and the posts and then the root canals.”
LIGHTNING 6, FLAMES 3
There have been moments during the Calgary Flames’ recent slump when you could have convinced yourself that if the puck just bounced a little differently, the results might have gone their way.
Tuesday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning (42-11-4) was not one of those times.
No, the Flames’ 6-3 loss to the league’s best team didn’t come down to a hot goaltender or missed opportunities. The Lightning simply outplayed the Flames.
The hosts in Tampa outshot, out-skated, out-hit and
all-around outclassed their visitors at Amalie Arena, and the Flames (34-16-6) got exactly the result they deserved.
In the Flames’ locker-room after the loss, there was no sugarcoating it: They simply didn’t play well enough to truly challenge a team as good as the Lightning.
“Pretty disappointed with letting that one go the way we did,” said Flames captain Mark Giordano.
Suddenly, a Flames team that was the toast of the Western Conference heading into the all-star break a couple weeks ago is floundering. They’ve dropped points in four of their last five games and have allowed 21 goals in that stretch.
On its own, a loss to the Lightning would be acceptable. They’re the best team in the league, after all, so beating teams is sort of what they do.
But what was striking was how one-sided Thursday’s game was. The Flames gave up multiple odd-man rushes and had several line changes that resulted directly in Lightning chances.
They simply made mistakes you can’t make if you intend to win NHL games at this time of the year, and those mistakes cost them.
On the Lightning’s first power play of the game, they circled the puck down to J.T. Miller, who fed an open Brayden Point out front for a quick one-timer at the 11:54 mark of the first period.
The next 5½ minutes saw the Lightning strike twice more, first when a screwy Flames line change led to Cedric Paquette slotting one in, and then again when Nikita Kucherov floated a wrister from the point that made its way through a screened David Rittich.
At that point, there was no one in the rink who would have bet on the Flames making a miraculous comeback.
For an all-too-brief stretch, however, they made it seem like they might.
They had a little burst of life before the period was done when Giordano scored on a two-man advantage — becoming the 10th defenceman in NHL history aged 35 or older to record 55 points in a season.
Then, when Sean Monahan buried one nine minutes into the second, it really felt like the Flames might make a game of it. That feeling was short-lived. Less than a minute after Monahan scored, Anthony Cirelli restored the Lightning’s two goal lead and all momentum was lost.
“That happens in hockey all the time, there’s momentum swings in games and you’ve got to be able to react,” said Monahan. “Tonight, we didn’t.”
No, they did not.
Yanni Gourde gave the Lightning a three-goal cushion at the 16:11 mark.
Steven Stamkos made it 6-2 only five minutes into the third, but the writing had been on the wall for a while by then — although Monahan’s second of the night made the final scoreline slightly more respectable.
The Flames have been insisting they’ve just got to keep showing up for work every day and putting in the work, and that they believe the results will start going their way again.
A loss to the Lightning shouldn’t change that, but there’s no getting around the fact that their results in February have been worrying.
“Our details were nowhere near where we need to be,” Giordano said. “I feel like we’ve let that slip in the last few. We’ll be ready Thursday, we’ll be a way more focused group and we really have to pull out of this.
“We feel like we’re sliding, we haven’t been getting the points we were usually getting at the start of the year and we have to stop it right now.”
The Flames have a chance to put this loss in the rear-view mirror on Thursday night when they take on the Florida Panthers in Sunrise.
The truth of the matter is, they are one point behind the Sharks for first-place in the Pacific Division and they have a game in hand. It’s not time to panic, but there’s work to do to right the ship.
“We know what kind of team we can be and each guy in this room knows what they’re capable of,” Monahan said. “At this time of the year it’s the details of the game, the small areas of the game, and playing your role and doing it effectively and (those are) the areas that I think are slipping away right now.”