Frustration is rearing its head for the Flames. Is it enough to change their fortunes?
It is 7-Ugly right now for the Calgary Flames.
After seven games, the flickering, flummoxing and floundering Flames have a 2-4-1 mark, are riding a three-game losing skid and feeling frustration.
Veteran forward Blake Coleman summed it up following Tuesday’s 3-1 loss to the New York Rangers.
“Losing’s got to keep you up at night,” Coleman told the media. “I know it’s easy to say, but I’m sick of losing. I think I can speak for the guys in our room that we’re sick of losing. It burns me up. You’ve got to be one of those guys that hates to lose more than win, and I think we’re just, as a group, we’ve got to have way more fire.”
Unlike the loss in Detroit to end their road trip, the Flames could have won this outing. They were the better team off the hop and the better team during five-on-five play, but two running issues were the culprits: the inability to score — especially when they had the chance to extend their 1-0 lead — and costly penalties. New York’s two power-play goals came on an offensive-zone holding infraction on rookie Matt Coronato and Nikita Zadorov’s holding penalty because of Jordan Oesterle’s turnover at the New York blueline.
There are plenty of other issues — the ongoing struggles of Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Huberdeau to name a couple — but the Flames had their chances.
Even so, moral victories are already worthless, and they know it.
“I don’t want to use the word embarrassing, but it’s a home game and we needed to come out and win and we didn’t,” Coleman said. “I’m pissed off, and I think a lot of guys are pissed off and I hope everybody handles it the right way and uses that as motivation. … We’ve got a lot of good players in this room and guys that, when we come together, we can be a very dangerous team, but we need to do that.”
Here are other takeaways from the loss:
Game of inches: Two key plays turned the tide. A couple of minutes before the Rangers received their first power play and scored to even the count 1-1, Coleman was absolutely robbed by Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin. Seconds before New York’s second man-advantage marker, Elias Lindholm was unable to corral a bounding puck and fire it down the ice to relieve the pressure. Those are the breaks that go against a struggling team.
Injury woes: Adam Ruzicka was having a pretty good start to the season, and now we wait to find out how severely he was injured in the first period. Ruzicka, who collected two goals and two assists in the first six games, was on the receiving end of a hellacious check from Jimmy Vesey that for some reason was not called boarding by the officials. The Flames are carrying one extra forward, against the Rangers it was AJ Greer, but a summons from the AHL Wranglers may be in the cards. Two likely options are playmaking center/left wing Connor Zary, who has collected eight assists in four games, or big right winger Adam Klapka, with four goals and seven points in four games.
Kadri closer: It’s fair to say struggling Nazem Kadri had his most visible game, and appears on the verge of breaking through. Kadri, who has just one assist and a minus-8 rating through seven games, did pretty much everything but find the scoresheet against the Rangers, including a potential highlight-reel worthy rush and toe drag around a defender before sending a backhand just wide. This team can not afford Kadri, Huberdeau and Lindholm failing to produce.