The Calgary Flames woke up Saturday morning sitting eight points out of a playoff spot.
They’ve lost three straight, albeit with an overtime defeat mixed in there. They’ve gone 3-7-1 in January, largely undoing the progress they made when they climbed the standings in December with a 9-3-0 record. They started the month at .500 but are four games below that mark today.
In Rasmus Andersson, the Flames traded away their best player, while several of the veterans they rely on to produce offensively are slumping hard.
What happened?
It’s been a bad month, at least as far as their dwindling playoff hopes go. For people rooting for a tank and the best pick possible in the NHL Draft in June, the excitement is probably growing.
What’s gone wrong, though?
It starts with goals, even if that doesn’t tell the whole story.
In six of their 11 games this month, the Flames have managed to light the lamp only once. Unsurprisingly, each and every one of those games has resulted in a loss.
“There’s a 99.9% chance you’re not going to win when you score one goal, so we’ve obviously got to get more,” said Flames winger Connor Zary, who has actually been producing this month and is tied with Yegor Sharangovich for the team-lead in January points, with seven. “It’s frustrating, for sure. We know as a group in here we’ve got to score goals, we’ve got to find goals, we’ve got to create offence.
“I think we’ve talked about it over the last couple days (about) how we can do that, getting pucks to the net and getting more traffic and recovering pucks, but at the end of the day that’s on our shoulders, right? To get there and bear down and score those goals.”
This is not the first time the Flames’ lack of offence has been written about. They’ve scored the second-fewest goals in the NHL in 2025-26 and it’s been a topic of conversation dating back to last season, when they scored the fourth-fewest goals in the league but managed to stay in the playoff hunt with a hard-to-play-against, tight-checking style.
Calgary Flames winger Adam Klapka takes a shot on Seattle Kraken gaoltender Philipp Grubauer at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Monday, Jan. 5.
Right now, it’s just not clicking.
They’re averaging 28.7 shots-per-game, which is the 12th-most in the NHL. In January, that number has dipped a bit and they’re averaging 26.3 shots-per-game, which is 23rd-most.
Shots aren’t the only indicator of the pressure a team is imposing on its opponents.
It’s probably no coincidence, though, that when the Flames were able to impose their gameplan and play the best period they’ve played recently on Friday night, they outshot the Washington Capitals 16-8 and came out of the opening frame with a 1-0 lead.
“The way we played in the first period is the way we want and expect to play,” said Flames head coach Ryan Huska. “You can say what you want about our lack of goalscoring over the last little while, if we play like that we’re going to score goals, it’s just a matter of time.”
That first period set a template. The Flames came out flying. They got the puck deep in the Capitals’ zone, were quick to close-in on defenders, fought hard along the boards and got guys to the front of the net.
Hockey players talk about those things a lot and it can feel cliché, but for the Flames, they really are the things they need to do to score goals. Relying on individual moments of magic isn’t a recipe for this group to have success.
Is there hope?
And the opening 20 minutes against the Capitals showed what it looks like when the Flames are executing on their gameplan. That they couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the game was frustrating, but is there a glimmer of hope to be found in the way the first period played out?
Maybe? With five games to go before the Olympic break, the Flames need to replicate what they did in that opening frame on Friday night if there’s any chance of closing the gap between themselves and the playoff contenders.
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“I thought the first period was one of our better periods in a while,” said Flames centre Morgan Frost. “We were in their zone more and got more pucks on the net. It felt like we were throwing everything at the net and had a lot more possession.
“It’s something we talk about at length over the last couple weeks and games, we’ve seen it before in that stretch we had earlier in the season (in December). When we play like that, we suck to play against, we’re a good team.”