DOWN & OUT?
Flames fragile — again — in loss to Knights, another huge hit to their playoff hopes
LAS VEGAS — It’s not the ’F’ word that is most likely being growled on the bench or inside the locker room these days.
But the Calgary Flames can’t seem to get away from this one ... Fragile.
Sunday’s 4-0 shutout loss to the Vegas Golden Knights followed an oh-so-familiar script for the Flames. Things were going fine. Something bad happened. Suddenly, the crew from Calgary crumbled.
In this latest case — in this latest deflating defeat — they surrendered two goals in a 53-second span early in the second period.
Before the buzzer sounded to end a one-sided stanza, surprise story William Karlsson had sniped a natural hat-trick for the hosts. It was 4-0.
It was over. Nobody on the Flames payroll is going to utter this particular ’F’ word — fragile — but that sure seems like the perfect summary of what unfolded Sunday at T-Mobile Arena.
“I mean, that’s kind of what you saw,” admitted Flames defenceman Michael Stone. “A bad bounce, we try to get two back from just one and then end up down by four. That’s kind of how things are going.”
That’s kind of been the story of their season.
“You’re going to get scored on — it’s how you react to mistakes and goals against and changes of momentum in games,” stressed Flames netminder Mike Smith, who provided 27 stops in Sunday’s matinee but watched first-star Marc-Andre Fleury pitch a 42-save shutout at the opposite end. “And today, I thought we didn’t handle it very well. We started forcing things. We thought we could get it all back in one shift, and that’s not the way it works in this league.
“You have to stick with your gameplan — you have to stick with what you’re trying to accomplish and stick with the little things and just try to inch your way back into it.”
What’s especially frustrating for the Flames is they dominated the opening period in Sin City, racking up 19 shots on net but winding up with exactly nothing — zip, zilch, nada — to show for it.
The momentum shifted shortly after the intermission — first with Golden Knights winger Ryan Reaves clobbering TJ Brodie on a clean hit and then with a man-advantage marker.
Flames defenceman Dougie Hamilton was banished for tripping when Colin Miller’s blast from the blue-line glanced off Stone’s elbow and eluded Smith.
Less than a minute later, Brodie gift-wrapped a giveaway to one of the other guys in the neutral zone. James Neal, the unintended beneficiary of Brodie’s generosity, dished to Karlsson on a two-on-one, and suddenly, the hosts were leading by a pair. (Brodie would later depart due to an upper-body injury, a result of the hit from Reaves.)
“We’re combining errors,” said Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan after Sunday’s setback. “The first goal, it’s a deflection. We have to rebound better from that than to give up the next one.
“The next shift after being scored on is something we’ve talked about this year. That next shift, you’ve got push and not give one up.”
Karlsson, it turns out, was just getting warmed up.
He buried a feed from Jonathan Marchessault for his second snipe of the afternoon. Then, with just over five minutes to play in the middle frame, he ripped a blocker-side shot on another odd-man rush to complete the natural hattrick with his third goal in a span of just four shifts.
The Flames have now dropped three of their past four, far from ideal for a team that is fighting to stay relevant in the NHL Western Conference playoff picture.
They remain four points out. After Sunday’s loss to the Pacific Division-leading Golden Knights, the Flames captain, Mark Giordano, suggested they might need to win each and every one of their remaining nine games to squeeze in.
So, doctor, is there an immediate cure for fragility?
“We have to clean it up and stop momentum changes, but you can’t blame guys for trying too hard and trying to do too much,” Giordano said post-game. “It’s not the lack of effort — there’s none of that. It’s just our reads and our decision-making and knowing that there’s still a lot of time left. That’s what I think hurt us today.
“I mean ... they’re a good team. They grabbed it. They made a couple good plays, too. We had some two-on-ones. We had some open looks in front of their net that didn’t go in. When they got them, they buried them. They put ’em in.”
The Flames will conclude this two-games-in-two-nights trip with Monday’s matchup against the Arizona Coyotes at Gila River Arena (8 p.m., Sportsnet West/ Sportsnet 960 The Fan).