Canucks Cut Flames’ Season Opener Celebration Short With 5-1 Drubbing

A day after making perhaps one of the greatest comebacks in franchise history, the Calgary Flames were humbled 5-1 by the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Thursday night.

Here are my three takeaways for the game:

After outshooting the home team 3-2 for the first 5:41 of the first period, not only did the Canucks restrict the Flames to just two shots on goal, but they put six on them for the rest of the period including a goal off a giveaway.

But Calgary, being a great comeback team it is, rebounded in the second period.

By the second break, the Flames had outshot the Canucks 39-26 in total shots in the game. Even though the stat sheet showed 16-13 shots on goals as favoring Canucks, the scoring opportunities were 17-9 in Calgary’s favor., including seven high-danger scoring opportunities for Flames versus a flat out zero for the hometown Canucks. Yet, Vancouver was still up 1-0 by the second intermission.

Unfortunately, it was the third period, where the Flames crapped the bed. More on that below.

This was probably the most disappointing. A team that has four opportunities at the man-advantage and comes up with zero goals is not going to go very far in the regular season.

During Calgary’s first power play, they were 0-for-3 in faceoffs, which was a big reason why the man-advantage didn’t materialize into anything. So they need to clean up their faceoff act as well.

Yeah, I’m not a pro hockey player, but even I know you don’t stop playing until the ref blows the whistle.

I get how the Calgary players were concerned about their comrade Kevin Bahl getting hit in the head and falling on the ice, but that doesn’t mean you freeze up and leave the goal unguarded.

As a result, Vancouver’s Filip Chytil scored a goal and put the Canucks up 2-0.

How costly was that?

It drained all the life out of the Calgary bench, and until the next Chytil goal 5:59 minutes later, the Canucks outshot the Flames 10-3 in total shots.

After that, Vancouver put on two more goals.

Except for a Morgan Frost goal, the Flames never recovered and frankly never had a chance.

As to things that I did like, going 4-for-4 on the penalty kill is amazing. The Flames did get out of their zone more easily than they did against Edmonton and they did have a lot more scoring opportunities than against the Oilers, but ultimately it was that second goal that just killed any life on the Calgary bench.

The Flames will now host the St. Louis Blues for their home opener on Saturday.

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