The effort? No problem there.
But when you’re right in the thick of a playoff race, it’s the results that inevitably matter most.
There’s not much room for error if you’re the Calgary Flames (28-22-8), and despite playing a solid road game against a red-hot opponent in the Tampa Bay Lightning (34-20-4), they ultimately came away with nothing from Thursday’s 3-0 loss in Florida.
Again, there can’t be many complaints about the way the Flames played. They’d have liked to generate more offence, of course, nobody likes getting shutout.
But a tough bounce led to the Lightning scoring on the power-play late in the first period and two third-period goals – one an empty-netter – sealed the deal.
“We liked our first period, got a bad bounce,” Flames winger Blake Coleman told reporters post-game. “Sometimes you get those, sometimes you don’t. We didn’t tonight, but throughout the game I think we felt pretty good about our process.”
Nobody wants to chalk up a loss to bad luck, and the Lightning deserve full marks for playing a very good game.
It’s just that the Flames didn’t play badly, either. The same performance and a bit of puck-luck against a lesser team might very well have led to a win.
The bad bounce in question came late in the first period with the Lightning on the power-play when Nikita Kucherov lobbed a harmless-looking pass towards the front of the net and it bounced off MacKenzie Weegar’s stick and into the back of the Flames’ net.
Weegar wasn’t too blame and there was absolutely nothing Dustin Wolf could have done, either. Bad bounces happen.
And the Flames just couldn’t find the goal they needed to even things up. Andrei Vasilevskiy had a good night in net for the Lightning, stopping all 27 shots he faced, and the Flames will surely put an emphasis on creating havoc in front of the net ahead of Saturday’s matchup with the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
They’ve played well through the first two games on this gruelling six-game road-trip, but Thursday’s loss still left them a point back of the Vancouver Canucks in the Wild Card race with their rivals taking on the Anaheim Ducks later in the evening.
Here’s three takeaways from Thursday’s game:
ON A ROLL
This is the third straight game where one of our takeaways has focused on the Flames’ fourth-line, and there’s a reason for that.
The trio of Ryan Lomberg, Kevin Rooney and Martin Pospisil seem to be clicking right now, bringing badly-needed bursts of energy and physicality to a lineup that doesn’t generate a tonne of offence – which we’ll get to in a minute.
They were at it again on Thursday, and while it obviously didn’t result in any goals, Lomberg did have a breakaway and they were able to create sustained pressure in limited playing time.
The Flames haven’t always gotten a tonne out of their fourth-line this season, but for now at least, it’s working.
NEED MORE FROM THE REST
Let’s leave the fourth line to the side for a second and focus on the rest of the forwards.
Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Huberdeau created chances again, but there wasn’t a lot of offence from the rest of the lineup. That’s been somewhat true since the break. Other than the fourth line and the trio of Kadri, Huberdeau and Matt Coronato, no other forward has managed a goal in three games.
“When you don’t score goals, someone has to step up and generate,” Flames head coach Ryan Huska told reporters. “I think Hubie had five shots on net and Kadri had four and I think we finished with 27, so other guys need to get themselves involved offensively because you can’t ask them to do it every night.”
NO BLAME IN NET
As we noted before, Wolf definitely wasn’t to blame for the Lightning’s first goal. Their second came from a sweet shot from Erik Cernak, while their third was an empty-netter by Brandon Hagel.
Ultimately, Wolf was pretty solid in the crease and stopped 20-of-22 shots. His best game? Maybe not, but he came up with some big saves in big moments.
Now, it’s going to be interesting to see how the Flames choose to move forward in net this weekend. There’s no question that Wolf is going to be the starter for most games, but with a tough back-to-back on Saturday against the Panthers and Sunday against the Carolina Hurricanes, they’re likely going to need to play both him and Dan Vladar.
There’s nothing wrong with that, especially after they got a great start from Vladar against the Washington Capitals on Tuesday evening.