Flames are not sweating Markstrom’s tough night
CALGARY – Jacob Markstrom won’t be happy with the way he played.
His Calgary Flames teammates, though, rushed to his defence after Wednesday’s bizarre 9-6 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second round playoff series.
Allow six goals, and you’re going to be the target of criticism. That’s inevitable, and Markstrom is notoriously his own harshest critic. He will not be thrilled with a game in which he stopped only 22-of28 shots.
The rest of the Flames locker room isn’t sweating his performance, though.
“He said before the third period ‘you guys keep doing your thing, I’m going to shut the door for you’ and that’s exactly what he did,” said Wednesday’s hat-trick hero, Matthew Tkachuk. “He’s been our MVP all year and it’s on us for pretty much every goal that went in earlier, whether it was turnover or just not working or mental mistakes.
“He’s been our MVP throughout this last however long, we have so much confidence in him and the way he was able to shut the door and calm things down for us in the third really helped get us that one.”
Looking back at the six goals the Oilers scored, there are only really two that you can absolutely pin on him. Those were Zach Hyman’s two goals in the mid-to-late second period that got past his glove.
If you wanted to blame Leon Draisaitl’s second goal right before the second intermission on Markstrom, it should probably be noted that it was scored on a two-onone. The two Oilers bearing down on the Flames net were Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, which is a brutally tough situation for any goalie.
The rest of the Oilers goals, though? You’d be hardpressed to say they were Markstrom’s fault.
His Flames teammates definitely weren’t pinning them on him.
“It’s nothing on him,” said Flames defenceman Rasmus Andersson. “He’s been our best player all year and we just didn’t help him enough today. That’s on all the other 18 guys out there.”
Markstrom is something of a perfectionist when it comes to his own play, so he won’t be happy with the way he played on Wednesday.
The Flames have bigger things to worry about than their Vezina Trophy-nominated goaltender, though.
The team was not pleased with their defensive performance against the Oilers. It’s all fun-and-games that they put nine goals past Edmonton shot-stoppers Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen, but they seem far more focused on their lacklustre showing on the other end of the ice when they spoke with the media post-game.
A 9-6 game might be fun for neutrals, but head coach Darryl Sutter had a short but simple takeaway from the game.
“Play better than we did tonight,” Sutter said when he was asked about what lessons could be learned from the game as the Flames look to put a stranglehold on the series in the second game on Friday night.
That was particularly true in the second period, when the Flames went up 6-2 and seemed to get away from the tight-checking game that’s carried them to so much success this season.
Maybe it’s understandable that you’d take your foot off the gas a little bit when you’ve got a four-goal lead, but that lead evaporated in essentially 12 minutes of game-time.
“They got one. Probably started feeling good. They got another, started feeling really good. We gave it to them,” Tkachuk said. “They obviously made some great plays, and Koskinen came in and made some big saves.
“Turnovers, bad line changes, not backchecking, stuff like that, probably go down the list in that second period. Stuff we’ve got to learn from.”
It’s those things the Flames will worry about and get to work on fixing on Thursday morning. They don’t need to worry about Markstrom.
Did he have his best game on Wednesday? No, but he was excellent in every game in Round 1 and a betting man would put his money on a bounce-back next game. After the Oilers tied the game at 6-6 early in the third period, Markstrom also turned away nine shots and didn’t seem the slightest bit rattled.
There are lots of other things the Flames need to fix. Markstrom just needs to be Markstrom.
Markstrom is something of a perfectionist when it comes to his own play, so he won’t be happy with the way he played on Wednesday.