What would hurt more than blowing a late lead to lose to your closest rival in the wild-card chase, missing an opportunity to claim a three-point cushion and instead allowing them to pull even in the quest for the eighth seed?
Well … all that and then an injury to a guy who is both a locker-room leader and a key on-ice contributor.
Wednesday turned out to be double whammy for the Calgary Flames. They not only dropped a 4-3 shootout decision to the Vancouver Canucks, but a couple hours before an entertaining and scrappy affair ended with a skills competition, Mikael Backlund exited with an upper-body injury.
Calgary’s captain logged only 2:58 of ice time in the opening stanza and didn’t return for the second or third.
“Obviously, it would have been nice to get the win for him,” said Flames winger Jonathan Huberdeau, who potted a pair against the Canucks. “He’s the guy that works the hardest I know. Hopefully, it’s not too bad.”
Wednesday wasn’t all bad.
The Flames received clutch contributions from some of their marquee men — two special-teams snipes from Huberdeau, two assists from MacKenzie Weegar, one goal and one helper from Nazem Kadri.
Their rookie puck-stopper, Dustin Wolf, certainly didn’t show any signs that he was feeling the pressure in the biggest game of his career to date.
And the locals did manage to snag one point, which leaves them tied for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Flames (30-23-11) and Canucks (30-24-11) are even at 71 points apiece.
The Calgary-based crew still holds one game in hand, although it’s tough to look at the bright side after you surrender the equalizer with 6:44 remaining in regulation and fall in a four-round shootout.
As Weegar summed up with a groan: “Ultimately, that’s a three-point loss, not a one.”
Here are three takeaways as the Flames turn their attention to Friday’s clash with the Colorado Avalanche …
What went wrong?
Elias Pettersson’s tying tally had a saw-that-coming feel to it.
The hosts were on their heels for the entire third frame. The shot-counter — 17 for the Canucks, four for the Flames — made that clear.
While the West Coasters should have been feeling the fatigue on the second half of a back-to-back set, they were boosted by the return of their captain, Quinn Hughes.
“I thought we were the better team in the first two periods,” Weegar said. “And for whatever reason, I thought in the third period we laid off the gas a bit, gave them a little bit more puck possession, weren’t killing plays as much in the defensive zone. Ultimately, when a team is pushing like that, they’re going to find their opportunities. I thought it was the third period where it kind of slipped away from us.”
Flames bench boss Ryan Huska agreed with that assessment. What’s worrisome is it was the same story Saturday, except that Wolf had masked over any miscues to complete the shutout.
“Everything in the third period the last two games is like one guy is going and nobody is going with him,” said Huska, who was taking some flak on social media for Wednesday’s shootout selections — Morgan Frost, Rasmus Andersson and Yegor Sharangovich were all denied, with only Huberdeau tickling twine before Conor Garland sealed it for the out-of-towners. “So it’s giving the puck to them and having no support around in your attempt to get it back. When we put pucks in during the third period in the last couple games, we’re not stalling them. We’re not impeding their progress back up the ice. And to me, it’s because it’s one guy only. There’s no waves coming at teams. I just feel like we quit skating and we weren’t as connected in the third period as we need to be.
“If we could mirror the first two periods and take that and bring it into the third period, then I think we’re in good shape,” Huska added. “We do a good job of skating, I think we’re hard and we forecheck the right way the first couple of periods, and then it’s almost like we get on our heels and we get into a little bit of ‘Let’s kind of retreat and have numbers back’ mode, instead of keeping the attack part of our game.”
Leading the charge
The Flames started this season as a team that nobody thought could get in.
So it feels appropriate that on one of their most memorable goals of this surprise playoff push … well … nobody saw it go in.
Huberdeau’s second of the evening Wednesday was bizarre because there no immediate reaction. Everyone must have blinked in unison as this laser of a shot sizzled inside the post and lodged behind the back bar in the middle of the net.
Sharangovich, parked at the edge of the crease, glanced up at the protective mesh and then was first to clue in that the red light should be on. He alerted the closest zebra by signalling for a good goal, although it was several seconds before the referee agreed.
“We didn’t see the puck really. It kind of disappeared,” Huberdeau explained. “Obviously, it was a good goal at that time. But our line, we gave up that third goal. That can’t happen.”
While that puck might have momentarily vanished, Huberdeau and Kadri are doing the exact opposite as this wild-card chase shifts into top gear.
In nine games since the action resumed after the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Flames have notched 19 goals. Huberdeau and/or Kadri have factored on 11 of those.
It’s scary to think of how anemic this offence would be without Nos. 10 and 91.
Kadri scored a beauty Wednesday on a partial breakaway — made possible by a superb stretch pass from Andersson. Before his man-advantage marker, Huberdeau had already cashed a shortie, finishing off a feed from Kevin Rooney on a two-on-none rush.
“I’m OK with the load they’re carrying,” Huska replied when asked about these first-line friends. “They’re top players and they’re paid that way too, and that’s what we expect out of them. But we also need other people to start generating more for us. It can’t always be on those two guys.
“I want them to continue to do it, because we need them to, but there should also be some secondary and third level scoring, as well.”
Concern for the captain
If Backlund is on the shelf for any stretch of time, it would be a massive blow for the Flames. That’s stating the obvious.
In addition to having the ‘C’ on his sweater, he’s a trusted shutdown centre, a fixture on the first penalty-kill unit and one of the NHL’s busiest faceoff men.
Kadri added a couple more descriptors — “security blanket” and “Swiss Army Knife.”
“He’s the guy that I lean on in all situations,” said Huska, who has tapped Backlund for 1,236 draws, the seventh-highest total in the entire league. “If their top line is on the ice, Mikael is the guy that is out there a lot of times. Or a big faceoff late in games, he’s the guy we go to.
“So hopefully he’s back in the lineup for us Friday against Colorado. We’ll have to see how that goes. But if he doesn’t happen to be, then somebody else needs to find a way to raise their level and pick up the slack that he usually brings.”
Connor Zary was shifted to the middle in Backlund’s absence, and Huska was lukewarm in his review — “I thought he was OK. He hasn’t done it in a little bit.”
Zary should get an extended look, because there aren’t a lot of other options.
Sharangovich has experience at centre, including stints earlier this season, but the Flames haven’t been thrilled with his recent work. They’ll need him to be much more engaged in these grind-it-out type games.
Rooney has been exclusively a fourth-liner since he arrived at the Saddledome, while it would be a big ask for either Rory Kerins or Sam Morton to come up from the minors and step into Backlund’s usual role.
Could there be another wrinkle? Some on the West Coast are calling for the NHL to take a closer look at Zary’s elbow on defenceman Elias Pettersson, retaliation for his heavy hit on Kadri. A suspension seems unlikely, but our record on these guesses is not great.