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Flames-Kraken Post-Game — Flames-Oilers Game Day |
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The Flames fell 3-0 to the Seattle Kraken last night in what was a bit of a stacked deck of a game. Seattle rolled out a large contingent of their better players while the Flames dressed mostly hopefuls. Despite this, they had more than enough opportunities to keep themselves in the game score-wise and simply couldn’t finish. A few notes on the individuals.
Matthew Phillips made a few sharp passing plays and teed up several one timers from his off side (the left side). His best chance, and the Flames’ best chance came off an in-close redirect by the slight forward directly in front of the net in the late third. Seattle keeper Magnus Hellberg managed to beat the odds with a kick save. It would be interesting to see Phillips get a look with Huberdeau. Jonathan’s creative passing game may catalyze Matthew’s finishing skills.
Cody Eakin
Not his best game. A couple of giveaways in the first. The veteran of over 700 NHL games didn’t do well in helping out Dillon Dubé. The line of Dubé-Eakin-Duehr was a mess. The Flames were out-attempted 6-13 while all three were on the ice. Individually, Dube and Duehr looked decent. More on that below.
Eakin at least had a good performance in the area that is his specialty — 60% on faceoffs. “Good faceoff taker, so-so hockey player” has been a repeated sentiment in Buffalo for years.
Sonny Milano
The same went for Sonny Milano. A few giveaways. Didn’t drive enough offence for a guy strictly pegged as a solely offensive player. He dropped low in the defensive zone to win a puck battle and then realized he was out of position and had no pass target up the wall because, well, that was where he was supposed to be.
Pelletier and Valimaki missed on disrupting not one, but two cross crease passes leading to the second goal against. Beyond that play, Pelletier played a solid game. More on Valimaki below.
The Flames penalty kill was 12/12 before tonight. 15/15 after tonight.
Adam Klapka used his size well retrieving and protecting the puck. On the other end of that, Phillips missed on a few loose pucks simply due to lack of reach.
Dillon Dubé and Adam Ruzicka looked far and away the best skaters for the Flames. Ruzicka got moved to center by the third period and covered the middle well — although he only won two of eight faceoffs, or 25%. Sutter isn’t going to like that. With that out of the way, the 23 year old won countless puck races and stickhandled through defenders with impunity. Dubé used his speed to open up space on his own and kept the Kraken defence on their heels with some sharp puck control. Unfortunately, Dillon didn’t have much to work with when he made room. Again, rough game for Eakin.
The nod goes to Ruzicka for better utilizing his teammates, but both showed why they are ahead of the rest of the forwards that dressed for the game.
Mackey-Meloche
This pairing played a very solid game. Mackey led all Flames in ice time with 23:25. Meloche certainly looked like an NHL defenceman. Great gap control, great angles.
In 12:51 of ice time, Jusso Valimaki was out-attempted 5-14. Sutter wanted him taking defensive deployments and the stats slanted on him. It’s difficult to find a metric that makes him look good, but at least there is some context. He’s really fighting it.
In an interview with Pat Steinberg of the Fan 960, he admitted that the struggle last season was mostly mental. He may need to go to a new organization in order to turn the page and get his NHL career rolling. I still think a full season playing for Ilves in the Finnish Liiga would be a great way to reset as well.
Here’s a look at the lowlight for Jusso.
Daniel Vladar
On a lighter note, the Flames backup looked sublime. The score could have been much more lopsided if it weren’t for several big saves during the first period. In two games he’s made 47 saves on 49 shots for a 0.959 save percentage.
The Flames are back at it tonight to take on the Edmonton Oilers with expectantly an entirely different squad. Here are the lines from yesterday’s practice.
Huberdeau-Lindholm-Toffoli
Mangiapane-Kadri/Backlund-Coleman
Lucic-Rooney-Lewis
Sutter-Bishop-McLain
Hanifin-Andersson
Zadorov-Weegar
Poirier-Tanev
Solovyov-Stone
Markstrom
Wolf
The Oilers lines will be posted when they become available.
Bread Rising
Tomorrow’s game may be a first look at the progress Andrew Mangiapane made over the offseason. Although, if he’s nursing a minor tweak — maybe it’s best to give him time.
The Defence
Both the Zadorov-Weegar and the Poirier-Tanev pairings will be interesting to watch. These guys haven’t had long to practice together, but it’s still nice to hope for a bit of immediate chemistry.
Trevor Neufeld
@Trevor_Neufeld
Stats via naturalstattrick.com, eliteprospects.com and nhl.com.
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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