FLAMES BOND DESPITE LOSS
Heritage Classic builds morale
Experiences, in life and in hockey, are important.
After Saturday’s thrill of a lifetime on the outdoor rink — playing before 33,518 shivering fans at Regina’s Mosaic Stadium, host site of the 2019 Heritage Classic — the entire lead-up, family skate and team bonding that occurred throughout the entire weekend was exactly that.
An experience.
The game itself — and the details in a 2-1 overtime loss to the Winnipeg Jets — is somewhat inconsequential. By all accounts, this was a throwaway game on an unpredictable ice surface in suboptimal elements that Mother Nature presented.
The usual, critical post-game questions didn’t seem right. How did their special teams do? What was their turnover management like? How did their line juggling fare? Did they show signs of consistency in their game, something they have been chasing throughout the first month of the 2019-20 season? Who cares, really. These questions could wait for one night.
But what the Calgary Flames (6-5-2) do hope to accomplish as they continue on from Regina and embark on the meat of this road trip — four games starting with Carolina on Tuesday (5 p.m. MT, Sportsnet Flames, Sportsnet 960 The Fan) — is to take this team-bonding experience and translate it into momentum.
“Just getting on the road is important as a group,” said
Flames defenceman Travis Hamonic. “We need to start playing a bit more consistent, which is obviously easier said than done. I do think we did a lot of good things (Saturday). It didn’t end the way we wanted, but we did a lot of things we were trying to clean up as a group. I think we can hopefully use that to jumpstart us on our road trip.”
It’s early, but this team hasn’t been great away from the Scotiabank Saddledome. After Saturday, they have a 2-4-1 record on the road.
This trip will be Calgary’s longest of the year with stops in Carolina, Nashville, Columbus and Washington.
Some nights aren’t going to be perfect. Saturday’s game wasn’t.
Flames head coach Bill Peters pointed to a poor response to a late Jets push. A bad line change that led to a penalty. A failed clear on the Flames’ penalty kill that led to Josh Morrisey’s late third-period goal to force overtime.
Then, they put themselves in a precarious position when they killed a penalty in the extra frame.
Peters liked his line changes — splitting up Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau and moving Elias Lindholm to centre — and outside of a tweak or two, he plans to keep them that way when the Flames hit the ice Monday at Raleigh.
“We’ll get ourselves ready to play and we’ll clean up what we need to clean up from this game,” Peters said. “We’ll make sure that’s part of what we do in our practice Monday and we’ll get ready for our game Tuesday.”
At the end of the day, the Flames salvaged a point.
“We take that point and move on,” said Flames captain Mark Giordano. “The way the game went, you’d like to get the two (points) to start the trip. But we’ll take the point, get back into our regular setting on the road and try to have a big road trip. It’s an important four games coming up for us.”
The Flames said goodbye to their friends and family that joined them in Regina and, after a feel-good weekend, resumed business as usual.
Hamonic said all of the Heritage Classic hoopla could help them moving forward.
“It forces you to step back and realize when times aren’t going as good as you’d wanna be as a group, you step back,” he said. “You spend some time with your family at an event like this. Especially during the game (Saturday), you looked down the bench and everyone was always smiling.
“When things aren’t going good, you have to smile. You have to try and have a good time. A game like (Saturday), we didn’t come out the way we wanted — but we had fun.”
A game like (Saturday), we didn’t come out the way we wanted — but we had fun.
NOTES
Jets forward Adam Lowry could face supplemental discipline from the NHL’S department of player safety during a phone hearing on Monday. Lowry took Flames defenceman Oliver Kylington into the boards at the end of the second period of Saturday’s game. The referees slapped him with a boarding penalty.