After an opening night win against the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday, the Calgary Flames travelled to Vancouver to take on the Canucks on Thursday. Running the same lineup as they did the night before, including Dustin Wolf in net, the Flames made far too many mistakes, allowing the Canucks to score five goals. While they did spoil Thatcher Demko’s shutout bid, the Calgary Flames lost 5–1 to the Vancouver Canucks.

From the discussion around having Wolf play once again, and Zayne Parekh once again sitting in the press box. There was a lot to be said about last night. Here are some of the key points from the loss

Lineup decisions

In the second half of a back-to-back, Ryan Huska ran the same lineup as the night before. Keeping in the likes of Jake Bean and Brayden Pachal, causing an uproar from the Flames fanbase. Especially when the ninth overall pick from 2024 is sitting in the press box. Zayne Parekh has been the best prospect this organization has had since Matthew Tkachuk. Continuing to sit him in the press box night after night is not good for him, his confidence, or the Flames as a whole.

Secondly, having Dustin Wolf start again was a bit of a head-scratcher. The only major signing that the Flames made this summer was adding backup goaltender Ivan Prosvetov, but he was waived in favour of Devin Cooley, who ended up getting the job. It seems as though Cooley has not yet earned the trust of the coaching staff, and they opted to run Wolf in back-to-back games early in the year.

This is unsustainable, and frankly wasteful this early in the season. Wolf is only 24 years old. Overworking him now risks injuries and hurting his career later on. Look at the other netminder from California across from him tonight. The Canucks overworked Thatcher Demko early in his career, and he went down with a bad injury that sidelined him for quite some time. If this becomes a habit this season, this is a major red flag for the team.

Reports are that the Flames are looking to add a backup netminder, but if they don’t believe in Cooley, they need to do this quickly. Nobody in the NHL is like Miikka Kiprusoff, and it’s unfair to expect Wolf to be superhuman.

Slow play and mistakes

Given it’s game two of the season and the back half of a back-to-back, it was understandable that after the first 20 minutes, the group as a whole slowed down. This is once again where the lineup decisions come into play. Not having fresh legs that you have available, especially when they were better than players out on the ice.

Out of the gates, the team looked good. They were quick on their feet and kept up with the Canucks. When the second period began, there was a clear difference with Calgary beginning to fall behind, especially with them already being down 1–0. After that, they could never really get back into the game, always being a step or two behind Vancouver the rest of the way.

Constant mistakes, losing puck battles, and being overpowered, it was just a sloppy performance all around. Losing one of your stronger defencemen in Kevin Bahl to an unfortunate bounce on the second goal certainly doesn’t help either. The team wants to improve upon last season, as they’ve mentioned on multiple occasions. If that’s going to be the case, they need to clean up and tighten up their game and stop making mistakes. For every mistake they made, the Canucks pounced and capitalized many times. When you look at the actual play of the team, it wasn’t even that much different than last season.

What’s next for the Flames?

It seems that the scoring issues that plagued Calgary for all of last year are very much still there. Only scoring one goal courtesy of Morgan Frost in “garbage time” when the game was already over. But if you look at this team this season, they have yet to score a single serious goal in their first two games. Against the Edmonton Oilers, the first goal was off a skate, then a borderline high-stick, followed by a classic Stuart Skinner gaffe. Last night, Frost’s goal was a shot that deflected off a Canuck before going in. Now, a goal is a goal, but this team is riding a luck streak that is highly unsustainable.

The injury to Kevin Bahl was extremely unfortunate. He was playing excellent hockey, fresh off his extension and went down after a puck to the head. Calgary can only hope that he isn’t out for the long term.

The Flames play next on Saturday against the St. Louis Blues with puck drop scheduled for 2 p.m. MT.

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