Update: Jusso Valimaki and Connor Mackey are dressing tonight. Gudbranson and Zadorov will sit. Lines updated.

While last night’s 4-2 victory over the struggling Anaheim Ducks wasn’t the prettiest or the most dominant win during the 21-22 Calgary Flames regular season; most fans are happy to take the two points and get ready for the Sharks tonight. Let’s look at a few points about the game that was.

Penalty trouble again
Three penalties in one game isn’t a horrible setback, but the timing — two in the third while defending a lead — was less than ideal. The Flames have taken nine penalties in two games so far on this California road trip. Five of them in the third period.

Despite having a 5th ranked PK at 83.2% on the season, the Flames have went 77.77% in the last two outings. A tough figure. To put it in perspective, the Oilers have a 77.2% penalty kill success rate.


Stone’s offence
A goal and an assist from the veteran Micheal Stone. Easily his biggest game of the 21-22 campaign. Outchanced the opposition 23-14 while on the ice. A very good game for the former top 2 defenseman.

Stone now has four points in seven games. Pretty good for a guy not getting into the lineup with any consistency. If his shot continues to pose a threat and his skating holds up, there might be a case for him to stay in the lineup even after Kylington is no longer day-to-day


Trevor Lewis
The 35 year old from Salt Lake City, Utah had one of his best games as a Flame. Winning races to the puck, standing his ground in corner battles, and some excellent work on the penalty kill unit.

He wasn’t rewarded with offensive results, but out-attempted the opposition 19-5 while he was on the ice.


Ceding control
While Calgary managed to out chance the opposition in both shot attempts and high danger opportunities, the Ducks still managed to maintain possession for extended periods of time.

Settling back into a formation in order to defend a one or two goal lead is commonplace in the NHL, but there were certainly stretches where the Flames were getting outworked in puck battles.


The Sharks
To finish out the mid-week back-to-back is the 42-19-9 Calgary Flames’ last kick at the can in terms of getting even one point out of the 29-31-9 San Jose Sharks.

Games one and two were episodes of the Adin Hill Show. The Calgary Canucks alumni has a .9420 save percentage against the Flames over two games. The Sharks staged a comeback in game three scoring two goals within thirty seconds of each other to take a 3-2 lead in the middle of the third period.


Record Hunting
With a +1 night last night, Johnny Gaudreau tied Joe Mullen for best single season +/- rating — +51. Obviously, the diminutive left winger has time to either gain or lose ground on that number, but it certainly puts to bed the narrative that Gaudreau is a liability at 5v5
No word on lineups, so this is yesterday’s configuration.


Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk
Mangiapane-Backlund-Toffoli
Dube-Lewis-Coleman
Lucic-Carpenter-Ritchie

Hanifin - Andersson
Mackey - Tanev
Valimaki - Stone

Markstrom
Vladar


Game time is 8:30pm MST.


Trevor Neufeld

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