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It’s a familiar refrain for the Calgary Flames, as they fell to the Dallas Stars 3-1 at home on Thursday night.  This team couldn’t score when they needed to, gave up timely goals to the Dallas Stars, and let their opponent hang around when they were pressing and getting their opportunities.  Once again, a strong performance from Miikka Kiprusoff, but the cushion is now just 1 point for 8th in the West.

The big story from this game was the no-goal late when it had seemed Calgary had tied things up.  Inside the locker rooms, Flames forward Niklas Hagman said he saw the goal past the goal line, no question.  Stars goalie Marty Turco said it may have ended up past the line AFTER the whistle was blown.  The officials got tons of looks at it, and took their time to make a decision…and from the replays we saw, it wasn’t a goal.  Turco made the save, and the puck didn’t end up over the line.  But you may look at it differently.

23 shots against, 34 shots for…yet the team still falls by 2 goals.  Everyone knows this team has trouble scoring.  But what we’re looking for right now is a team that is able to win close games, and when the offensive woes are likes this, it just isn’t that easy.  You’re pressing, you’re not scoring, you’re close in seemingly every game…you have to imagine the pressure mounts to play a perfect defensive game, and when that’s the feeling, mistakes are made.  A couple breadowns lead to a couple goals, and bam the Stars come away with a win.  I still don’t buy the fact that Calgary doesn’t have an offensive element to what they do, they are getting the chances…but they still can’t cash.  You have to believe that’s messing with the confidence.

How you fix it?  Who knows…I guess you can go out and make some more trades, but I wonder if at this point it might be better for the Flames to try and work themselves out of this.  If that works?  Great.  If not?  Then you can make some changes in the offseason.  I wonder if that might not be the best bet for this team right now.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Steinberg960.

You can make it points in 4 of their last 5 games, and you can make it wins 2 of the last 3 for the Calgary Flames…they take a 4-1 win at home over the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday night.  It’s Calgary’s 28th win of the season and it vaults them back into a tie for 8th in the Western Conference.  The Flames were much more energized and used a great penalty kill to come away with a well deserved win.

First on the 2 new guys…really liked Chris Higgins, wearing #21.  He was really good along the wall, was physical, and was a really smart player.  That’s the book on this guy…he’s smart, he’s a details guy, and can cash if he gets the opportunities.  Higgins finished with 16:23 of ice time, he was a +1.  As for Ales Kotalik…eh.  13:36 of ice time, ended up taking 5 shots, saw some time on the point on the powerplay.  He looked all right, at least there’s a little potential there.  Following the game, Kotalik was pretty excited, said he enjoyed playing in this atmosphere at the Dome.

Matt Stajan was solid, scoring his first goal as a member for the Flames.  In fact, I thought the line of Stajan, Iginla and Hagman had a little jump and it was a solid game from the captain once again.  He set Stajan up on his goal with a nice pass across, and Stajan did a nice job kicking it to his stick in traffic and sliding it past Cam Ward.  Jamal Mayers was pretty fun to watch too…got in a fight with Tom Kostopolous, had some jump, even had a couple scoring chances.

Flames did take some penalties, and were shorthanded 9 times…but credit the penalty kill, they ended up getting more shots shorthanded than the Hurricanes did while up a man.  Jussi Jokinen did score on the man advantage for the Canes, but Calgary really did a nice job bearing down.  Overall, it was nice to see some emotion from the Flames…now they need to carry it over, start melding it with some other wins.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Steinberg960.