Blake Coleman, who sniped Saturday’s winning goal for the Calgary Flames, had just finished talking about how the previous game “left a pretty bad taste in all of our mouths.”
And now Ryan Lomberg, on the sort of scoring spree that you seldom expect from a fourth-line firecracker, wanted to talk about … pizza?
These are the type of soundbites that you only hear after feel-good victories.
For the Flames, Saturday’s 3-2 triumph over the Edmonton Oilers certainly fit that description.
After they were embarrassed by their arch-rivals four nights earlier in their final outing before the holiday break, the Flames rallied to split a home-and-home set that sandwiched turkey dinner.
Which brings us back to Lomberg’s second-period strike, which followed a gruesome giveaway by Oilers blue-liner Alec Regula and gave the Flames a lead they’d never relinquish. The feisty forward cashed on that sudden breakaway, going shelf on the blocker-side for his third goal in a five-game spell.
“I got a little Pizza 73 deal here so I think that Regula or whatever his name was, he might be helping out with some of that,” Lomberg cracked in a post-game scrum. “I told him I wanted to hand some pizzas out over the break, and I didn’t mean to me. I thought we were gonna go around town and hand ’em out.
“But good on him and shout out Pizza 73. Great pizza. Put it right in the oven there.”
Since we can’t cook up a better line than that, let’s dive into our three takeaways …
Flames defenceman Rasmus Andersson checks Oilers forward Connor McDavid during Saturday’s game.
Masterful against McDavid
It’s been nearly a month since Oilers superstar Connor McDavid finished a game without any points.
And while the NHL’s leading scorer did find the back of the net with four-and-a-half minutes remaining in this Battle of Alberta rematch, it’s a compliment to Calgary’s shutdown sorts that he was so close to being blanked Saturday.
“For the most part, I thought guys did a great job team-checking him,” said Coleman of McDavid, who racked up five assists to lead Tuesday’s rout at Rogers Place and now has 32 points during a dozen-game tear. “They did get the one there but other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot.”
During his post-game presser, Flames head coach Ryan Huska told reporters “we needed our top players to be our top players tonight, and I felt like they most definitely were.”
On that list would be Coleman and his buddy Mikael Backlund, plus the defence pairing of Rasmus Andersson and Kevin Bahl.
They were responsible for mostly silencing McDavid.
Coleman and Backlund also combined for the would-be winner, a back-and-forth beauty that came with 7:29 to play and No. 97 on the ice for the enemies.
“Big goal,” said Huska, whose squad is now 6-1 on home ice during the month of December. “I liked their approach tonight. I thought they were skating. I thought they checked hard. I thought they had purpose to what they were doing.
“Blake was energized. He was one guy that took his game to another level, which was something that we needed from him.”
Flames forward Adam Klapka battles Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard.
Klapka’s best yet?
These are the nights that really leave you wondering, in a good way, what Adam Klapka could be capable of as he reaches his peak as an NHLer.
He is, of course, a mountain of a man, listed at 6-foot-8 and 235 pounds.
That’s why Mattias Ekholm and Leon Draisaitl went flying when Klapka tagged both with hits on the same second-period shift.
Klapka also has soft hands for a big man, as evidenced by his no-look, right-on-the-tape feed to Yegor Sharangovich for Saturday’s opening tally.
Klapka was also a factor on Coleman’s marker, causing some chaos as he beelined to the edge of the blue paint on that odd-man rush.
Based on his impact, it felt like he played a whole lot more than 10:49. The Oilers would certainly agree.
While Klapka is 25, which would suggest he should be just entering his prime, it’s only been four years since he was signed as an undrafted and unpolished project out of the Czech League.
“Klapper, that might have been his best game of the year,” Huska said after No. 43 finished with three shots, four hits and a plus-3 rating in this Battle of Alberta re-do. “He did a lot of really good things for us tonight. He played like a big man, like we want him to play consistently. That’s kind of been our challenge with him this year — you see it in flashes and then it goes away for a bit.
“He could be a real impressive player … ” the coach added before correcting himself. “He will be a real impressive player once he finds that consistency in his game. He’ll be a hard guy to handle.”
Flames goalie Dustin Wolf and defenceman Hunter Brzustewicz keep tabs on Oilers forward Mattias Janmark.
Triple digits for Wolf
Dustin Wolf logged his 100th NHL appearance Saturday, a nice mileage marker for the sophomore puck-stopper and a feather in the cap for the scouting staff.
A seventh-round steal in 2019, Wolf is an overdue success story for an organization that has not had much luck with grow-your-own goalies, and that’s putting it mildly.
We triple-checked this stat, because frankly it seems a little hard to believe, but Trevor Kidd preceded Wolf as Calgary’s last draft-pick-in-pads to play at least 100 games between the pipes in the Flaming C logo. Kidd was a first-round selection in 1990. (More recently, Laurent Brossoit and Curtis McElhinney have gone on to hit triple digits in career crease calls, but neither came close to that mark before leaving Calgary.)
Wolf celebrated the milestone in style, with 29 saves against the Oilers.
“I thought he was excellent tonight,” Huska said. “That’s a couple in a row. I felt like we hung him out to dry in Edmonton and I think he gave us a great effort there. But he was as good, if not better, tonight.”
He had a bit of help, and not just from his teammates.
The Oilers hit the iron four times, including twice by McDavid, with Wolf always turning at the next stoppage to hit the cross-bar.
“That was my best friend out there tonight,” said Wolf, who heard that ringing again when Evan Bouchard pelted the post with 45 seconds to play. “And you know what? It’s positive energy. It hits the post and goes out instead of the other way around. Sometimes, it feels nice to get rewarded and not be disappointed after a bounce.”