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That’s a little more like it! The Calgary Flames took a 5-3 win over the Vancouver Canucks on Friday night at the Dome, snapping a 3 game losing streak. It was an effort that was hard to dislike from start to (almost) finish, and without a doubt was a step forward from the last 3 games.
All kinds of positives on this night. First off, I thought the Flames completely dominated the physical side of this game. It started with their forecheck and continued through their entire game, and it was decisive. From Robyn Regehr to Dion Phaneuf to Daymond Langkow, you could tell a physical gameplan was part of the MO for the Flames tonight. They were winning board battles and using their physical edge to turn pucks over. Pressure was put on Shane O’Brien, Aaron Rome and Kevin Bieksa on the ‘Nucks blueline, and there a number of times we saw pucks coughed up. Forwards like Kyle Wellwood and Mason Raymond seemed to want no part of Calgary’s game tonight.
Also loved the traffic in front. I thought Calgary’s best game this season (before tonight) was their second win over Edmonton at Rexall, and in that game Calgary had all kinds of bodies in front of Nikolai Khabibulin. The same was true tonight, with the Dawes and Phaneuf goals coming directly from traffic in front. It was something talked about prior to the game, and it was a big part of the win.
Great game for the entire blueline…Regehr was much better and finished +3 with 20:52 of ice time. He was a physical force and it was by far his best game this season. Dion Phaneuf quietly leads the Flames in goals with 4, and he had a real nice game…to me, he’s been a pretty consistent player throughout the season. And Miikka Kiprusoff was brilliant this evening, making big save after big save…who knows, he doesn’t make a couple of those saves and this might be a different game with motivation and such.
Are some concerned with the 2 late goals? Maybe…but to me, they were both PP goals, 1 5-on-3 so I won’t take too much from it. Yeah, you wanna see a team finish up strong, keep the pedal down, etc. But I’ll take the 57 really solid minutes, because there’s a lot to build on. Flames get back in action Tuesday night at home to Columbus.
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I was very pleased to see that the Flames got off to a great start in the first period. When they scored that fifth goal I thought, “Here we go again!” I was really hoping that Kipper would finish with a shutout, however I thought on the Samuelsson goal he had no chance. I thought the third and fourth lines were fantastic once again, they’ve been our best lines so far this season. I thought that Iginla was fine tonight however he didn’t make as much as an impact as on other nights. I really hope that Jokinen gets his game going because when guys like Mcgrattan are scoring two points you need to step up. Last of all Pat, where is David Moss? I heard that he has an injury, but I still don’t know what it is and how long he’ll be out for. By the way, you’re doing a great job on overtime!
PS: Thanks for the kind words Jev! First off on Moss, nobody is really sure on the prognosis…all we really know is that it’s a lower body injury at this point. It’s been really vague with him and it doesn’t seem like anybody really knows what’s going on. Here’s how I look at it in terms of the top guys like Jokinen and Iginla. It’s all fine to be getting contributions from the 3rd and 4th lines…it’s great, and I believe we’re going to see the Flames get balanced scoring on a pretty regular basis. BUT there are going to be times when there isn’t secondary scoring, and that’s when the Flames are going to need their top players to be their top players. So it’s going to happen eventually, although I thought both looked really good on Friday night.
- JevI like what your doing on overtime, but we really miss Brass Bononza.
PS: Dude! I brought back Brass Bonanza on Friday night! It’s a special occasion song, and beating the Canucks more than qualified!
- Russ