The Calgary Flames can exhale.
The Flames snapped out of an eight-game losing skid with Sunday’s 5-1 victory over the New York Rangers at the Saddledome.
Five goals is their biggest outburst of what has been an awful October. Perhaps it’s a sign the Flames are emerging from a cold-spell that still leaves them in dead-last at 2-7-1.
“The overall feeling is a little bit of relief,” said Flames head coach Ryan Huska.
“It feels good to get a win,” echoed Blake Coleman, who tallied twice against the Rangers. “Doesn’t mean much if we can’t build on it, but it feels good.”
Agreed Connor Zary, who had a gorgeous assist: “I would just say it’s a weight off our shoulders.”
Nazem Kadri, Kevin Bahl and Yegor Sharangovich also found the back of the net during Sunday’s slump-buster, while Mikael Backlund assisted on both of Coleman’s goals and Dustin Wolf delivered 30 saves in the home crease.
Here are three takeaways from a win that the Flames really, really, really needed …
Frost’s fit on the flank
Hmmm … This might be worth an extended look.
When Huska scribbled his line combos Sunday, he tried something totally new — moving Morgan Frost from centre to the wing and then bumping him up to the top trio. Frost worked the right side, with Kadri up the middle and Jonathan Huberdeau on the left. (Arguably Calgary’s best faceoff man, Frost handled the bulk of the draw duties and successfully swiped 57.1 percent.)
“It’s a little different,” Frost said after morning skate. “I haven’t played on the wing in a while, for sure, but when you see your name up there next to Naz and Huby, it’s a good feeling.
“So I’m excited. Something different, and hopefully it can get my offensive game going.”
Offensively, this trio made an immediate impact.
On their first shift against the Rangers, Huberdeau dropped a backhand pass to Kadri and he ripped a top-shelf shot as Frost helped by setting a screen out front.
On their third five-on-five spin, Kadri dished to Frost after entering enemy territory, and he spied Bahl just inside the blue-line. The towering rearguard picked a corner for his first of the season.
While a pair of goals isn’t exactly cause for a parade, it’s worth noting that Frost, Huberdeau and Kadri totalled four even-strength points in that opening period.
Heading into Sunday’s action, they had combined for only three — two for Frost, one for Kadri and none for Huberdeau, whose season debut was delayed by injury.
“I liked it, I really did,” Huska replied when asked about his first impression of his new top line. “I thought there was a little bit of creativity to it, where there were three guys who were trying to make some plays, especially through the neutral zone into the offensive zone. I think that’s where they can be a good line for us. We’ll see. We’ll give them another chance to go.”
There’s a second reason that the Flames may want to leave Frost on the wing — because Zary has made a convincing case in these past couple of games that he is best slotted as a middle-six centre.
Sharangovich’s first goal of the season doesn’t happen without Zary. He carried the puck about 150 feet up the ice, danced past Braden Schneider and drew the attention of a backchecking Brennan Othmann to leave his linemate all alone in the slot.
“For me, I’m always trying to gain the zone with control,” Zary said, explaining that setup to Sharangovich. “I slowed up a little bit to let him join and then just go into my bag of tricks and try to make a skill play.
“You try to bait the guy in a little bit and make a move, and it worked in my favour. And I saw the second guy come and try to jump me so I knew a guy would be open out front.”
Coleman’s scoring surge
As saucing a pass to his captain and penalty-killing pal on a two-on-one rush, Coleman wasn’t expecting the puck would wind up back on his stick-blade.
“Not at all, actually,” he grinned. “Never in practice. I don’t know where that came from. I tried to hang as long as you can and then it was just a heck of a play by (Backlund).”
Indeed, this shorthanded connection was a thing of beauty.
While he may have been able to bury this one himself, a wily veteran like Backlund knows that it’s wise to ride the hot hand.
That seems to be the 33-year-old Coleman, who scored twice in Sunday’s final frame — his second was a wrist-shot that was deflected by a defender — and is suddenly up to five goals on the season.
“I poked fun at him a while ago about his hands maybe not being the greatest,” Huska revealed in his post-game presser. “But the one thing Blake does is he goes to the net very hard and he sticks around the front of the net and he finds a way to muscle pucks in or put pucks into the net however possible.
“To me, he’s a workhorse for our team. He’s an energy guy and he’s a glue guy.”
And he’s their leading lamp-lighter.
No other Flames player has more than two markers. Second on the team charts is shared by Backlund, Kadri, Rasmus Andersson and Matt Coronato, who was surprisingly a scratch against the Blueshirts.
“I just play my game. I don’t think too much about how many I’m going to score or anything like that,” said Coleman, now three back of Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard Trophy frontrunners Mark Scheifele, Jack Hughes and Shane Pinto. “It’s more of am I generating offence and opportunities and keeping the puck out of my net at the same time? I kind of view my game holistically.
“I’ve been able to score a couple here, but that’s the way our team is. It’s gotta be by committee. It’s gotta be different guys every night. If I can step up and score more goals, I think it’s just going to help the team.”
Wolf’s heavy workload
Wolf has been the NHL’s busiest backstop so far this season.
The sophomore standout has logged more ice time than any other goalie this fall, already with 517 minutes on his stat-sheet. (Colorado’s Scott Wedgewood is second, at 496:01.)
The good news is Wolf, despite logging his ninth start through 10 games, did not look the least bit fatigued against the Rangers.
Of his 30 stops, none was better than a desperation paddle save to rob Alexis Lafreniere of a back-door tap-in during the second period.
“Honestly, I didn’t see him there,” Wolf admitted post-game. “I thought I was screwed, just kind of threw something, anything, at it. Those are the bounces we haven’t been getting, and it feels good to be on the other side of it.”
The last time the Flames leaned on their No. 1 netminder to work nine of the first 10 games was in 2017-18, which was Mike Smith’s first campaign in Cowtown.
The franchise record for most starts in a season belongs to the legendary Miikka Kiprusoff, who was tapped for 76 crease-calls in 2007-08 and equalled that mark the following winter. In the fall of 2007, Kiprusoff started 23 in a row before backup Curtis McElhinney was finally on the ice for the anthems.
“I feel good,” said Wolf, who will surely be between the pipes again as the Flames open a four-game road-trip on Tuesday at Toronto. “I’m doing everything I can away from the rink to take care of myself. Obviously, we have a great training staff to help with that. I take my days to get rest when I can and just get ready for the next opportunity.”