And that, my friends, is how a team comes crashing back down to earth.
There have rightfully been lots of good vibes emanating from around the Calgary Flames recently. They took 11 out of a possible 12 points from their recent six-game homestand and were playing loose, fun hockey.
Then, on Monday night, they ran into the best team in the NHL.
And the Colorado Avalanche weren’t interested in taking it easy. Instead, they were utterly relentless in battering the Flames from start to finish en route to a 9-2 win at Ball Arena in Denver.
The Avalanche chased Dustin Wolf from the game after the Flames netminder allowed four goals on 16 shots. They then proceeded to put five more past Devin Cooley.
They got three on the power-play, two of which came courtesy of former Flames centre Nazem Kadri. They scored on the rush. They scored by getting pucks deep and retrieving them. They scored and they scored and they scored.
In the end, it was the first time the Flames had allowed nine goals in a game since an Oct. 25, 2018 game against the Pittsburgh Penguins and it served as a humbling reminder of the gulf that exists between teams jockeying for the best lottery odds at the bottom of the standings and the real-deal Stanley Cup contenders like the Avalanche.
For fans around Calgary who have been starting to sweat about the team’s draft prospects as they found ways to win over the last week-and-a-half, Monday’s result should provide some relief. The Flames play the Avalanche two more times between now and the end of the season, and there wasn’t much to suggest they’ll be able to keep those games particularly close.
Yes, there were goals from Brennan Othmann — his first in a Flames uniform — and Ryan Strome, but Othmann’s goal came after the Avs had already taken a 5-0 lead and Strome’s came late in the third period when, for all intents and purposes, the game was already over.
Beyond that, it was ugly. The loss keeps the Flames in 29th place in the league, so they’d currently have the fourth-best lottery odds if the season ended today.
It doesn’t, though, and the Flames won’t be happy with anything that went down on Monday night in Denver. Even if wins and losses don’t matter to most fans right now, the Flames have higher standards than what we saw against the Avalanche.