Photo Credit: James Guillory-USA TODAY Sports
Because Flames wins are few and far between lately, I’m still grinning from the win in Raleigh against the Carolina Hurricanes. During the post-game interviews, some of the players and Coach Hartley expressed their happiness with the plays that were made as well as their satisfaction with the outcome of sixty minutes of great hockey by the Calgary players.
Sean Monahan was part of the three on one in the third period that put the insurance goal in the net for the Flames and earned his 13th goal of the season. During the Monahan interview he said that the team “came together as a group, and battled hard.”
During the Backlund interview, when Mikael Backlund was asked about his goal that put the Flames on the board, he said, “it’s easier to play with some energy when you score than have to chase all the time, which we’ve been doing lately.” He also stated that he didn’t know about the “A” on his jersey until he walked into the dressing room before the game. Hartley had called him “a good investment for today and tomorrow,” in regards to Backlund taking over the alternate position on the team in Mike Cammalleri‘s absence.
The Ramo interview proved to me just how humbled Karri Ramo truly is when he brushed off the idea of getting his first shutout by saying, “it’s good to get it out of the way…you just have to try to focus and play.” When told that the last shutout, before Miikka Kiprusoff, was Roman Turek in 2004, hinting at the idea that Ramo should take pride in himself and his accomplishment, the netminder stated, “it’s just one statistic,” thus proving again that he just wants to play the game.
Leave it to Bob Hartley to tell it like it is. In the Hartley interview, he told us that he was happy with the pressure in the first period, he was impressed with the time spent in the offensive zone, and he believed the Hurricanes pressed hard at the end of the game. He also stated that the Flames were the “best team ever of the season” during the game against Carolina.
It was a solid sixty minutes of hockey from a team that has been fighting an up-hill battle recently. The win was much needed and hard earned.
Go Flames Go!