The Calgary Flames(7-1-3) riding a 10 game point streak take on the shorthanded San Jose Sharks(6-4-1) at the Scotiabank Saddledome.
Game Story:
The game started out very slowly with a first period which looked like a feeling out period between 2 teams that haven’t seen eachother since early 2020. However, it wouldn’t last in the second, San Jose quickly scored thanks to a bad Flames change and a good shot by Alexander Barabanov, the Sharks were up 1-0. But a mere 30 seconds later and Milan Lucic would strike, jamming the puck in, this goal was reviewed to see if the puck went in which it obviously had and then challenged by the Sharks for goaltender interference which also didn’t prevent the goal from counting, tie game 1-1. For the rest of the second period, the Flames would dominate possession but go 0/3 on the PP and were unable to break the 1-1 tie. The third Period started and the tides turned quickly, the Sharks got a lot of shots early while the flame were unable to get any offense going. This continued for about 4 minutes before Zadorov threw the nuggets hit of the season to one of the Sharks, However, this did not sway the momentum to the Flames side as the sharks went down and on a funny bounce to beat Markstrom, Logan Couture had the Sharks up 2-1 in the third. The Flames would continue to play sloppy for the rest of the period, getting outworked and trapped in their own zone many times. Adin Hill played magnificent and stole this game for the Sharks but the Flames certainly didn’t do themselves any favours. The Sharks would add 2 empty netters to win 4-1 in Calgary.
My Thoughts:
Markstrom was good tonight although he did not play as well as he did in recent games. Two flukie goals beat him(I call the first goal flukie because of bad defence, not really his fault) but in his pretty small workload, he was able to keep the Flames in that game.
Some more good, The Flames did play well tonight, although it was a very sloppy game, The Flames had 72% of the Deserve to Win O’Meter and had 3.55 expected goals, like I said, the Calgary kid Adin Hill stole this game for the Sharks.
The Flames top line had one of their worst games of the year with just under a 60 GF%, but they weren’t without their chances which included Tkachuk hitting the post in the second.
The Hanifin-Andersson night was not great, allowing one goal on 11 shots against them. Both those players were sloppy tonight although they were not alone.
Sloppy play from the Flames and great goaltending from Adin Hill is what defined this game. The Flames 10 game point streak comes to an end and they move to 7-2-3 on the year. They will start a 7 games in 11 days stretch on Thursday in Montreal.