It’s only five games, right?
It has to be too early to panic for the Calgary Flames.
And yet, these five first games of the 2025-26 season count for just as many points as the games in March and April, when the playoff race is going full-blast, and going 1-4-0 isn’t going to help the Flames reach any of the goals they set for themselves pre-season.
You don’t throw in the towel because of a rough start to the year, but as head coach Ryan Huska acknowledged after Wednesday’s 3-1 loss to the Utah Mammoth, the repercussions of not figuring your game out fast can be severe.
“You need to find your game in a hurry because you can’t make the playoffs in the first month of the year, but you can surely miss them,” Huska told reporters in Salt Lake City.
After a hectic first week of the season, the Flames will get a quick breather before they take on the Golden Knights in Vegas on Saturday night. They’ve already had two back-to-backs – with both games coming in different cities in both cases – and haven’t had a quote-unquote “easy game” on the schedule so far.
A single day-off on Thursday in Vegas isn’t much, but the Flames are hopeful it can help.
“We lost four in a row, which is definitely not good enough,” said Flames defenceman Rasmus Andersson. “We’ve just got to take a breath. It’s been five games only and we kind of know what to do in here. It’s something as simple as five-on-five, we’re a good team. We’ve been a good team for a long time.
“The penalties killed us (Wednesday against the Mammoth) but let’s almost just pause and take a breath and then just get ready for Saturday.”
So what, exactly is ailing the Flames. Are there fixes?
Let’s take a look at a few key areas:
SCORING
This was a concern going into the season and it’s a concern today.
Last season, the Flames scored the fourth-fewest goals in the NHL with 220 and brought back essentially the same lineup for 2025-26 with an injection of youth added in.
With Martin Pospisil and, in particular, Jonathan Huberdeau both out to start the season, they’ve seen their offence dry up.
They’re currently averaging 1.80 goals per game, which is dead last in the NHL. Only once have they managed to score more than twice in a game and, while they have been creating opportunities, the finish hasn’t been there.
Huberdeau’s imminent return should help — he’s their best playmaker, but this team just isn’t going to win many games if they’re not creating more — and finishing when they do.
DEFENDING
On the other end of the ice, the Flames haven’t fared much better.
They’re currently allowing 3.80 goals-against-per-game. Only six teams around the NHL are allowing more.
The Flames’ goal-differential through five games is minus-9, which is second worst in the league, although they’ve played more games than the teams immediately around them, so it’s not a completely fair metric to judge them by.
Either way, it goes without saying that a team that doesn’t score much needs to be tight defensively and that’s not how this has played out. Last year, they might not have scored much, but a key ingredient in their recipe for success was their defensive stinginess.
They’ve allowed 14 goals against in 5-on-5 play, too, the most in the NHL. Again, that’s not a totally fair barometer because they’ve played more games than any of the other teams in the bottom-five, but it’s an area where they need to tighten up.
In 2024-25, the Flames were able to stay in the playoff hunt despite being a low-scoring team because they didn’t give up much in the other end.
They’ve got to get back to that and they have to do it fast.
GOALTENDING
Has Dustin Wolf been as exceptional as he was last season? No, but this is one area where we’ve got to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He was handed the gargantuan task of playing three games in less than four days to start the season, including a back-to-back in Edmonton and Vancouver.
That second game in B.C. was really the only time he has struggled and there’s a reason goalies generally don’t play two nights in a row.
Wolf’s 3.77 goals-against-average and .873 save percentage only tells us so much. He isn’t the problem and he will be better. That’s a very safe bet.
The good news is Devin Cooley’s performance against the Mammoth should offer reassurance that he’s ready to step in and provide relief for Wolf in similar high-volume situations going forward. He stopped 29-of-31 shots and gave the Flames a chance, even if they couldn’t take advantage of it.
RelatedSPECIAL TEAMS
The power play is a work-in-progress. The Flames have scored on three of their 19 opportunities with the man advantage, which is good for the 21st-best rate in the league (15.8%).
You don’t want to put too much weight on Huberdeau returning but, again, he’s better at finding a pass than anybody on the Flames roster and when he’s back it should provide a real boost to the team when they’re playing 5-on-4.
The penalty kill, meanwhile, has actually been very effective.
They’ve allowed only three goals on 20 penalty kills, with two of those coming in their season opener against the Oilers. Those two goals came on the Flames’ first two penalty kills of the season, too, so they’ve been pretty much elite since then. They were down a man six times against the Mammoth on Wednesday and didn’t give up a single goal.
Cutting down on the penalties they take might be a bigger priority than the work that gets done when they’re down a man. They’ve got the 14th-best PK in the NHL (85.0%).
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