At the start of the month, the Calgary Flames were on a roll.
January has not gone the way anyone around the Saddledome would have liked, though.
The Flames have stumbled and are now seven points back of the Western Conference’s second wild-card position. They were only one point out of a playoff spot on Jan 1.
It hasn’t been all bad, though. The stats tell us that there are actually areas of the team’s game that are pretty elite right now. There are others, of course, that help explain why they’re struggling.
Here, we’ll take a look at five stats from this month that help explain the state of the Flames with four games to go before the Olympic break:
THE GOOD: Killing penalties
We’ll start with a positive. The Flames have been really, really good at killing off penalties in January. The best in the NHL, even.
Since the beginning of the month, they’ve killed off 26 of 27 of their opponents’ power-play opportunities. They’ve also scored a shorthanded goal, meaning that in 12 games they’ve scored as many as they’ve allowed when they had a man in the penalty box.
It’s even more impressive that they haven’t allowed a goal while on the penalty kill in the four games they’ve played since trading Rasmus Andersson, who was leading the team in shorthanded ice time prior to the deal that sent him to the Vegas Golden Knights.
The Flames don’t score much — we’ll get to that — so they need to be strong on the penalty kill and their recent efficiency while playing four-on-five has bumped their season-long numbers, so that they’ve now killed off 83.7% of their penalties — the fifth-best mark in the league.
THE NOT GOOD: Scoring
It’s not like this is new. Over the course of the entire season, the Flames have scored the second-fewest goals in the league with 130. Only the St. Louis Blues have scored fewer.
They haven’t bucked the trend in January, though. Through 12 games this month, the Flames have scored only 24 goals. That’s two goals per game and they’ve managed to score only once in six of those matchups.
There were signs of progress on Sunday against the Anaheim Ducks. The Ducks have allowed the second-most goals this season, but the Flames still deserve credit for digging deep and scoring three.Â
Still, a lack of offence has been a challenge for the Flames for a couple of seasons now. They know they need to play tight, defensive hockey to win games. A few more goals wouldn’t hurt, though.
THE NOT-GOOD, NOT BAD: Power-play
The Flames have scored on six of their 30 power-play opportunities since the New Year. That’s 20%, which is 20th in the NHL.
That definitely doesn’t qualify as great, but it’s not a bad rate of conversion, either.Â
The challenge is the Flames haven’t been drawing a ton of penalties and only three teams in the NHL have had fewer power plays than the Calgary crew so far this month. If they could get a few more chances at 5-on-4 hockey, they might be in a better position.
The good news is the power-play units have looked like they’re finding their groove over the past couple of games. They’ve scored in two straight, including off a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play between Nazem Kadri, Matvei Gridin and Matt Coronato against the Ducks.
THE NOT-SO-GOOD: Overtime
When games go to overtime this season, the Flames have won four games and lost six. Two of those wins have come in shootouts, as well as two losses.
Overtime has been tricky for the group in January, though, with the Flames losing both of the games that required extra time. They didn’t manage a shot in OT in their 2-1 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Jan. 20 and then conjured up only one against the Ducks on Sunday.
Andersson had played more overtime minutes than anyone else on the roster by a fairly significant margin, but there are other guys who can contribute.
This is something that can and should be sorted out and January’s two overtime games are an exceptionally small sample size.
THE WAIT-AND-SEE: Goaltending
Dustin Wolf has played a lot of hockey so far this season. He’s third in the NHL in games played among goalies with 39 and the two guys ahead of him have played 40.
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That’s not to say that the numbers he has been putting up in January have been due to fatigue. Wolf himself would reject that suggestion outright.
Through eight games this month, though, Wolf has posted a 1-6-1 record to go along with a .879 save-percentage and a 3.76 goals-against average.
Nobody serious actually believes Wolf is one of the Flames’ issues, but it’s nevertheless notable that his numbers haven’t been up to his usual high standard.
It’s worth noting, though, that Devin Cooley continues to give the Flames great starts when he’s called on as the backup.
Cooley has gone 2-1-1 through four starts and has posted a .950 save-percentage and 1.50 goals-against average.