Saturday's win was just the fourth time the Calgary Flames won when trailing after the first period. Can they string together a win streak on the road?
The Calgary Flames are a frustrating team to watch this season. Calling them a Jekyll-and-Hyde group is not unfair. Every time they look like they’re building momentum, the Flames lay an egg and drop a couple of games in a row.
Indeed, after it began the season with a three-game win streak, Calgary has posted exactly one more three-game win streak. Otherwise, it has been unable to win more than two consecutive games, and the Flames came back from the all-star break with two straight defeats. Saturday's win brings their record to 25-18-10.
Underscoring their consistency issues is the way they’re losing. This is not a team that has shown the ability to come back from a deficit after two periods of play. The Flames are an impressive 14-1-2 when leading after the first period, and 22-1-3 when leading after the middle frame. They're an abominable 0-11-2 when trailing after the second period, just 7-8-5 when tied after the first, and a dismal 3-6-5 when tied after the second. If you can build a lead on Calgary midway through the game, you’ve got an excellent chance at beating them.
In addition, the Flames are a subpar road team – their 11-9-8 record away from home is even with Vancouver (11-14-4) and San Jose (11-14-3), and only lowly Anaheim (8-16-5) has fewer road wins in the Pacific Division.
Their starting goalie, Jacob Markstrom, just ended a six-game losing streak (0-3-3) and has a save percentage of .892 this season heading into Saturday. If it weren’t for the performance of backup Dan Vladar, who has gone 9-1-3 since the start of December, Calgary would be far out of the playoff picture.
As it stands, the Flames are currently tied with Minnesota for the final wild-card slot in the Western Conference. The backsliding Wild have dropped three games in a row, but they still have one game in hand on Calgary after they play Saturday night. And the Flames are only four points ahead of the 10th-place Nashville Predators, who have three games in hand on Calgary. Just one extended losing streak from here on could be enough to separate the Flames from the wild card teams by season’s end.
The league’s schedule-maker has presented Calgary with some major challenges in their next 13 games: they’ve got six road games (against Ottawa, Arizona, Vegas, Colorado, Dallas and Minnesota) and six home games (versus Detroit, the New York Rangers, Philadelphia, Boston, Toronto, and the Wild again). There aren’t many easy wins for them for them from now up until the NHL’s March 3 trade deadline.
Meanwhile, Flames GM Brad Treliving is projected by CapFriendly to have approximately $4.4 million in salary-cap space, which is not enough to be a big-time player on the trade front. They might be able to acquire a decent-enough veteran forward – Flyers winger James van Riemsdyk would be a
good example of the type of quality they could trade for – but it may cost them a high draft pick, chipping away at their long-term future.
There’s still time for Calgary to turn things around, but the runway they’ve got to try and stick the landing is getting dramatically shorter with each passing week. Nashville is nipping at their heels in the wild card race, and their arch-rivals in Edmonton are starting to pull away toward the top of the Pacific. If the Flames repeat their 5-4-1 record in their past 10 games, they’re not going to be a playoff team. And a season that began with so much promise – and a new era for a franchise that had to replace their top two young forwards who left the team in the summer – is going to be fraught with bitterness, regret, and disappointment.