PLAYOFF PAYOFF?
Brouwer heating it up at right time
X marks the spot. Eventually. They hope. The Calgary Flames had a glorious opportunity to punch their ticket to the NHL post-season party and squandered it with a 4-1 loss to the visiting Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night.
They let emotion get the best of them in a rough-and-tumble game that felt like the playoffs. Instead, it left fans to wonder what is going to happen in the coming days as Calgary (43-30-4) sets out on its toughest part of the 2016-17 regular season schedule — home games against San Jose and Anaheim, plus three more road games against their Pacific Division foes Anaheim, L.A. (again) and San Jose.
The Flames still have a chance to officially put an X beside their name in the standings on Friday with a victory over the visiting Sharks.
In the here and now, however, they face the possibility that they could drop into the second wildcard spot.
The Pacific Division standings are log-jammed among the Ducks (95 points), Sharks (93 points), and Oilers (93 points), making it impossible to predict a first-round matchup. But first the Flames have to get there.
And they didn’t do it on this night.
The nail in the coffin came with only 6:09 into the third period as Anze Kopitar made it 3-1 on a slapper to give the Kings a two-goal cushion. The Flames went library silent as Los Angeles continued to play a textbook road game. For fun, Jeff Carter scored a fourth at the 12:40 mark.
Ironically, the Flames clinched a playoff spot in 2015 against the Kings with a 3-1 home victory in Game 81.
The prelude to everything, of course, was bad blood stemming from the last time these teams met on March 19, when Matthew Tkachuk was suspended for two games after an elbow to the head of Drew Doughty in a 5-2 Flames win.
Words were exchanged through the media and it fuelled the fire.
On Wednesday, it started with a conversation at centre ice during warm-ups between Kyle Clifford and Tkachuk. Then Micheal Ferland and Troy Brouwer joined in to chat with Clifford and Andy Andreoff. But this rookie didn’t need anyone to fight his battles. He tried on the first shift of the night to drop the gloves with Jake Muzzin, but he didn’t bite and Tkachuk was tagged with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
The faceoff immediately following Dougie Hamilton’s marker at 3:04 into the first period, Tkachuk found a dance partner in Brayden McNabb — a heated tilt. It didn’t stop there. Andreoff was given two minutes for roughing and a 10-minute misconduct after trying to drop the gloves with Lance Bouma.
Then, Deryk Engelland gave Kopitar a shot behind Calgary’s net to cause a turnover and that led to some words exchanged with Jarome Iginla (yes, old friend No. 12) and the two veterans fought at centre ice. To the surprise of absolutely no one in Calgary, Iginla, at 39 years old, got the best of Engelland.
The Kings got on the scoresheet at the 12:04 mark when Trevor Lewis cashed in on a deflection of Derek Forbort’s shot. More rough stuff ensued. Tyler Toffoli slashed Johnny Gaudreau, giving the entire bench a bit of a scare as he cradled his left hand on the bench in pain.
But he was back on the ice the next shift.
Shortly after, Mikael Backlund bumped Trevor Lewis and also got a penalty. At the same time, Tkachuk was giving Doughty an extra shove at the whistle. Then, to end the period, Sam Bennett dumped Alec Martinez into Kings goalie Ben Bishop.
That was just the first 20 minutes.
Tkachuk continued the shenanigans in the second period, trying to go at Doughty in L.A.’s end. Didn’t work. He tried again, this time at centre ice, and Doughty was bracing for it. He ducked at the last minute, sending Tkachuk flying just looking forward now. Obviously, to get to 300 is nice, but I just want to keep on going and keep trying to help this team win, because it’s been a lot of fun right now.” … Iginla, the longtime star at the Saddledome, might be able to climb one more rung on the NHL’s all-time goal-scoring list before the end of this season. Heading into Wednesday’s matchup, the 39-year-old needed just two markers to tie Joe Sakic, who ranks No. 15 among the NHL’s career leaders with 625 lamp-lightings. He only needs one more after Wednesday’s game. His second-period marker versus the Flames was his first at the Scotiabank Saddledome as a member of the opposition … Calgary scratched D Dennis Wideman, C Curtis Lazar, C Freddie Hamilton, and D Rasmus Andersson … Next up? The Flames host the San Jose Sharks Friday, the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday, and head out on a three-game road trip to wrap up the season versus the Ducks (Tuesday), Kings (Thursday), and Sharks (Saturday). over top of him. Andreoff went after him and was ejected, taking a second 10-minute misconduct to end his night with a cool 35 penalty minutes.
To make things even more interesting, Iginla scored the go-ahead goal with 45.8 seconds remaining after he sent the puck toward Calgary’s net on his stomach. Mark Giordano accidentally hit the puck past Brian Elliott.
Heading into the game, Tkachuk had responded to Doughty’s comments — he’d called Tkachuk a “dirty player” following their last meeting — saying that his focus “isn’t on him,” but on the “playoffs.”
On this night, Doughty and the Kings got the last word.