Prior to Friday’s showdown at the Saddledome, Calgary Flames centre Mikael Backlund was asked about his opinion on advanced stats.
He sees some value in those numbers, but …
“I focus on the final score,” Backlund quipped, delivering a one-liner that his coach would be proud of. “I guess that’s a simple stat.”
Hours later, his line — a crew that has been putting up very impressive analytics of late — connected for a first-period marker. Blake Coleman shovelled in a rebound, with both Backlund and Andrew Mangiapane earning assists, and that would ultimately stand as the game-winner as the Flames rolled to a 4-1 victory over the visiting New York Islanders.
Plain and simple, you gotta like that.
“You know, we scored big goals,” assessed Flames bench boss Darryl Sutter. “That was the difference.”
It didn’t hurt that they scored a few of ‘em early.
Just when you wondered if the Flames were allergic to anything that didn’t end as a one-goal game, the locals gave themselves a bit of wiggle room with three tallies on their six shots during the opening frame.
Milan Lucic put the home team ahead when he blasted a one-timer — his linemate, Jonathan Huberdeau, provided the setup — over Semyon Varlamov’s shoulder for his first strike on home ice since mid-March. He was serenaded by the C of Red with an appropriately boisterous ‘Loooooooch!’
Coleman cashed only a minute-and-a-half later and Nikita Zadorov capped the early flurry by roofing a slapper from the point.
“Our focus was on having a good start,” Lucic said. “And that was a big reason why we won tonight.”
“Six shots in the first isn’t ideal,” Coleman added. “But we capitalized on our opportunities, which has been a bit of a miss for us in some of these games. So it’s good to get rewarded on a few chances.”
If you’ve been studying the advanced stats, you wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to see such a strong opening shift from the Backlund-Coleman-Mangiapane trio. They set the tone on that first twirl, then scored on their third spin of the evening.
“Since we’ve been back together, we’ve had a ton of chances,” Coleman said after a first-star performance. “Again tonight, we leave the game and we’re like, ‘We probably could have had three.’ That’s how we feel after almost every game. So getting one is good, but I think we all feel in our trio that we still have another step to go in finishing off our opportunities.”
The Isles scratched one back before Friday’s first intermission, with Zach Parise sidestepping a flat-footed Zadorov and going top-shelf, but the Flames managed to maintain a two-goal cushion until Nazem Kadri somehow squeezed a puck between Varlamov’s ear and the short-side post in the third. Perhaps already tuning up for the target-shooting competition at the 2023 NHL All-Star Game, Kadri glanced that sharp-angle wrister off the side of the goaltender’s mask.
“I did not call bank,” Kadri admitted post-game. “But that’s where I was shooting it. Luckily, it went in.”
PROUD CZECHS
Dan Vladar and Radim Zohorna can see the silver lining.
While the two Czechs on the Flames’ roster were hoping for an alternate ending to Thursday’s gold-medal game at the world junior championship, they’re awfully proud — as they should be — of how the up-and-comers from their home country performed over the past couple of weeks in Halifax.
They upset Team Canada in round-robin action and nearly repeated the feat in a thrilling final, eventually falling 3-2 in overtime.
“I feel like the silver medal is still good for us, I would say” Zohorna said. “But if you have a chance to get a gold medal, you hurt a little bit. Still, the guys were amazing. They played a very good tournament.”
Indeed, they did.
For the Czechs, silver marked their first medal at the world juniors since 2005.
Vladar made three straight trips to the annual U20 showdown, primarily as a backup, but never advanced past the quarterfinals.
“They just showed that even though there is a lot of people that have been negative about what’s going on in Czech hockey, that they can come together and create a great team,” Vladar said of the current cast. “It’s awesome to watch.”
It was nerve-wracking to watch, too.
The Czechs also had to work overtime in a semifinal matchup against the Swedes. In fact, Vladar briefly was fooled into thinking they’d lost and would be battling for bronze.
Why’s that? His better half was receiving notifications on her phone, and those alerts were several seconds ahead of the TV feed. We’ll let the grinning goaltender tell the rest of the story.
“We were sitting next to each other and I hear this beep and they had the puck in our zone and I’m like, ‘Oh no … ’ ” Vladar said. “And then she looked at me and she’s smiling and still the puck is in our zone, we don’t even have the puck on our stick. But then all of a sudden we scored.”
On Thursday, after the Czechs potted a pair in the third to force sudden-death, Dylan Guenther sniped the golden goal for Canada.
“I was so sweaty in the OT. I was screaming, ‘No! No!’ ” Zohorna said. “It was a little unlucky for us. I think the guys had a pretty big chance to win it.”
OFF THE GLASS
Flames stalwart Jacob Markstrom stopped two breakaways in the same minute of Friday’s middle stanza, thwarting a fresh-from-the-sin-bin Casey Cizikas and then preventing Jean-Gabriel Pageau from scoring a shortie. He finished with 23 saves. “He looked dialled in from the start,” Coleman praised. “ It didn’t look like he was going to be beat by anything but a perfect shot tonight, and that’s the only one that beat him” … A neat note from the NHL’s stat department — Kadri, who signed in Calgary as a free agent this past summer, notched his 15th goal of the season in Friday’s triumph. Dating back to the 1993-94 campaign, Kadri is one of just four players to score 15-plus through his first 40 games with the franchise. The others? Elias Lindholm (18 in 2018-19), Michael Cammalleri (15 in 2008-09) and German Titov (17 in 1993-94) … The Islanders, on the second half of a back-to-back, were missing their leading scorer Mat Barzal due to injury. They always play a stingy style and limited the Flames to just 21 shots … It was a milestone night for Mangiapane, now with 300 loggings at the NHL level … After Thursday’s announcement of the initial all-star selections, Lucic wrote on Twitter: “Vote me in!!!!” The hard-nosed forward explained Friday that post was spurred by a comment from two of his biggest fans. “I had a question from my daughters on why I wasn’t named an all-star,” he said. “It’s the only way I can get in so if people want to make my daughters happy and get me to the all-star game, you can vote for me to get in” … Thanks to that first-period sizzler from Zadorov, Calgary’s blue-line brigade has now combined for 21 tallies on the season. They rank near the league lead in that particular category, although they’re just a smidge ahead of the pace that Sutter considers the bare minimum. “At the end of the year, if you don’t have 40 goals from your defence, you’re going to be looking to figure out why not,” Sutter stressed after morning skate … The Flames will now stuff their Samsonites for a five-game road-trip that starts with Sunday’s clash against the Chicago Blackhawks in the Windy City (5 p.m. MT, Sportsnet West/Sportsnet 960 The Fan).
wgilbertson@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/WesGilbertson
Post a Comment