Penalties haunted the Calgary Flames on Monday night.
There were things to like about the way the Flames (12-7-3) played in their 4-3 loss to the Ottawa Senators (9-11-1), but all of them were overshadowed by an unrelenting parade of players being sent to the penalty box.
In total, the Flames were assessed 10 minor penalties in the nation’s capital, and that’s just not a recipe for coming out on the winning end of a game.
“I don’t care what league you’re in, you’re not going to win a hockey game or give yourself a chance to win (when you take that many penalties),” said Flames head coach Ryan Huska to reporters in Ottawa. “Five-on-five, we worked hard and did some things. There was a fight right until they end, so I’m proud of our group but we didn’t really give ourselves a chance with the penalties we were taking tonight.”
The Flames have not typically been a highly-penalized team this season. Prior to Monday’s game they had players in the box an average of 8:54 per game, which was the 15th highest total in the league. That’s the definition of middle of the pack.
But their discipline just wasn’t where it needed to be against the Senators. To its credit, their penalty-kill held its own, allowing two goals on nine Sens attempts with the man-advantage – Brayden Pachal’s first-period cross-checking minor was offset by Ridly Greig being sent to the box for holding Pachal’s stick.
But as Huska explained to reporters in Ottawa, the repercussions of taking so many penalties goes well beyond the toll it takes on the guys tasked with killing them off.
“It’s not just the penalty killers, it’s the other guys who don’t kill penalties because they’re sitting on the bench for long periods of the game,” Huska said. “You’re overplaying some guys, your underplaying other guys and then you’re expecting them to pick up where you expect them to be having sat on the bench for long periods of time.”
TURNING POINT
It’s worth wondering what might have happened if one call in particular had gone the Flames’ way.
Shortly after Jonathan Huberdeau had scored the game’s opening goal, MacKenzie Weegar appeared to score a second for the Flames, although it was immediately waved off because Justin Kirkland had made contact with Sens goalie Anton Forsberg.
The Flames challenged, arguing that Kirkland had been pushed into Forsberg by Jacob Bernard-Docker, but the NHL’s video review team determined the call on the ice got it right.
“Kirky’s path was to not go into the crease, he was pushed in,” explained Huska when asked about the challenge by reporters in Ottawa post-game. “In situations, from what we’re understanding, if he’s pushed in or was directed towards the goalie, it should have counted.”
The Flames did have a successful challenge later in the period after the Sens appeared to have scored, but you can’t help but wonder how things might have been different if the call on Weegar’s goal had gone their way.
Up two against a team that was low on confidence, who knows?
ABOUT THE PENALTIES
It’s worth noting that the Flames weren’t penalized for anything all that egregious against the Senators. That’s not to say the calls were bad, but it was a strange game.
Kuzmenko had to serve two minutes for the Flames’ unsuccessful challenge. Kevin Bahl got a delay-of-game penalty for flipping the puck over the ice. Weegar took an interference call for a hit on Claude Giroux where the Sens vet seemed to almost slip-and-fall.
None of them were especially bad, but they added up.
“A full period of penalties to kill off, that’s a tough job for the PK to do,” Flames centre Nazem Kadri told reporters. “We kind of hung them out to dry a little bit tonight, but we’ll be better for it.”
SOME POSITIVES
Despite the penalties, there were things to like about the Flames’ performance against the Sens.
The power-play stayed hot and has now scored in four straight games after Jonathan Huberdeau potted one on the man-advantage early. Yegor Sharangovich appears well-and-truly back to his old self and has goals in three-straight and while Dustin Wolf’s stat-line wasn’t amazing – he stopped 26-of-30 shots – he could hardly be faulted for any of the Senators goals.
And Mikael Backlund’s goal with 39 seconds remaining in the game meant the matchup went down to the final seconds, despite the parade of players to the penalty box.
Unfortunately, though, that was just too much to overcome.
“We were down two goals but there was no quit in the group,” Huska told reporters. “It’s just shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties tonight. That’s the story of the game.”
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