1. Lone Star Skate<\/p>\n
Blake Coleman implored everyone aboard the Flames’ Air Canada charter to do one thing Sunday, as the team touched down at Love Field.<\/p>\n
“Breathe it in,” he announced. “It’s God’s country.”<\/p>\n
Suffice it to say, the Plano, Tex.\u00a0product was all smiles at Monday’s Flames practice in Dallas, too, his two daughters scurrying around the Calgary dressing room as the veteran forward took questions from the media.<\/p>\n
“It’s fun,” Coleman said of spending some time at home with his wife and three (soon to be four) kids. “They got their playmate back, so last night, it was tiring,<\/p>\n
“But it’s great to be home.”<\/p>\n
But amid the family time, Coleman is also cognizant that this stretch of the season is important to instill habits. It’s a vastly different-looking Flames group than the one that played here a day before the 2025 Trade Deadline (Calgary’s last visit to American Airlines Center), and as one of the veteran voices in the room, it’s on Coleman and his colleagues to show the way, with Saturday’s 5-3 win in Anaheim providing the most recent example of team success.<\/p>\n
“You want guys to learn how to win, it’s a hard league to win in,” he shared. “At this point of the year, it’s (about) guys understanding how tough it is to win night in and night out.<\/p>\n
“It was a good effort, we were opportunistic with our chances, and a couple guys had really big games for us. We’re getting a little more of that.”<\/p>\n
As much as the home stretch of the 2025-26 campaign is about veterans leading the way, it’s also about Calgary’s young players getting valuable experience, too. Take Aydar Suniev, for instance. The young winger was recalled from the AHL’s Wranglers Friday and could well make his second career NHL appearance under the bright Dallas lights Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a lot of excitement,” Suniev said Monday about being recalled, and possibly featuring against the Stars. “There\u2019s always going to be pressure, but I think I\u2019ve just got to go out there and do my thing, do what I do best, and I think it\u2019s going to be fine.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Lone Star Skate Blake Coleman implored everyone aboard the Flames’ Air Canada charter to do one thing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[895,26,5294,896,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-544877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary-flames","8":"tag-calgary","9":"tag-calgary-flames","10":"tag-calgaryflames","11":"tag-flames","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116361458138133694","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}