CHICAGO — The Calgary Flames had every reason to feel confident about playing the Chicago Blackhawks.
Confidence can be a dangerous thing, though.
And on Sunday, the Blackhawks (10-25-4) proved to be a trickier challenge than the schedule might have suggested.
They scored early, they scored often and then they scored in overtime, handing the Flames (19-14-8) a surprising 4-3 loss to kick off their vital five-game road trip.
There’s really no way of sugar-coating a loss to the team with the worst record in the NHL. This is a game that just about everybody was expecting an improving Flames team to win.
But it was also a pretty weird loss. There was lots to like in the way the Flames played. They had 47 shots on net, after all, but just couldn’t capitalize on their chances while the Blackhawks seemed to take advantage of every opening they were provided.
“Should win,” said Flames head coach Darryl Sutter. “Take one penalty, score two power-play goals and give up a handful of shots. Should win the game.”
The Flames didn’t, though, and that’s frustrating.
It’s not like they need to be told not to allow the Blackhawks to take the lead less than three minutes into the game on Lukas Reichel’s first NHL goal.
While the Flames did tie it up on an Elias Lindholm marker, the Blackhawks were up 3-1 just 35 seconds into the second period after Colin Blackwell and Phillipp Kurashev had scored.
Jacob Markstrom doesn’t need to be told that allowing three goals on 11 shots isn’t good enough, and he surely understood why Sutter chose to replace him with Dan Vladar after Kurashev scored.
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And while the Flames did bounce back, they’re all too aware that spotting the Blackhawks a two-goal cushion was a recipe for trouble.
“It wasn’t ideal, for sure,” said Nazem Kadri. “We know we can come out better than that, but at the end of the day we showed some character and battled back and tied the game and had lots of opportunities to finish the game, just couldn’t buy one.”
That was, by and large, the story of the game’s final 39 minutes.
Goals from Kadri and Jonathan Huberdeau tied things up, but the Flames just couldn’t find a winner. They had opportunities. Lots of them. They just couldn’t get the puck past Blackhawks goaltender Alex Stalock, who stopped 44 shots.
They did manage to hit the crossbar twice, but as we all know hitting the crossbar isn’t scoring, and it left the door open for Max Domi’s overtime goal to give the Blackhawks the win.
“I think overall, we’ve got to execute better,” Lindholm said. “We had a lot of chances just got to let them not hang around for that long and bare down and get a couple goals and we should get the win. But sometimes that’s the way it goes, I think there’s things we can do better.”
The loss will sting, regardless of whether there were parts of the Flames’ performance that they can feel good about. Losing to the team with the worst record in the league is never a good feeling, that’s for sure. They’ve got two games against the Blues in St. Louis this week and then a matchup with the Dallas Stars before they finish their road-trip up in Nashville against the Predators next Monday.
The Flames need to pick up wins while they’re on this trip, and Sunday against the Blackhawks looked like a perfect opportunity to start things off right. That didn’t happened.
The Flames did manage to get a point, though, and that counts for something.
“We’ve got to take the point,” Sutter said. “We didn’t skate yesterday because the Harlem Globetrotters were playing in our building and we had to travel and then couldn’t skate this morning because it was a 6 o’clock game, so we’d better be thankful that we got a point considering that a lot of our young players didn’t show up, a lack of preparation, right? Gotta take them by the hand, some of these guys.”
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QUICK HITS
With his second-period goal, Kadri took the Flames team lead in goals-scored this season, with 16. He’d previously been tied with Tyler Toffoli. For those keeping track, the goal means Kadri is now on pace for 32 goals in 2022-23, which would tied his career high of 32, which he hit twice — most recently in 2017-18 with the Toronto Maple Leafs … Andrew Mangiapane played his 300th NHL game against the New York Islanders on Friday night. Unsurprisingly, that’s not an accomplishment that is particularly meaningful to the 26-year-old. As it turns out, 300 really is just a number. “It’s not really a milestone you celebrate, but it’s a nice one to hit and hopefully I have a lot more games coming,” Mangiapane said on Sunday morning from the Flames’ hotel in Chicago … Flames defenceman Connor Mackey, from nearby Tower Lake, Ill., didn’t play in Sunday’s game, but he did participate in warmups … After the Flames pulled Markstrom, Vladar definitely had time to find his feet in the game. The Blackhawks managed only three shots on net in the 19:25 that was remaining in the second period after he stepped in between the pipes. Vladar was sharp when he needed to be, though, especially when he absolutely robbed Domi early in the third period … Not sure they really qualified as fights, but both Michael Stone and Dillon Dube got into little scuffles Sunday. Stone got into it with Jake McCabe early in the second period after a scramble around the Flames net, and then Dube and Domi had a mostly harmless to-do after Dube was penalized for boarding Kurashev later in the period.
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