Photo Credit: Anne-Marie Sorvin-USA TODAY Sports
POST GAME RECAP
The list of infractions was lengthy in the beginning of the game.
After all the screaming and yelling by John Tortorella directed at Bob Hartley, after the misconducts and fighting majors were handed out, and after the total penalty count was at 152 mins in the first two seconds of the game, the real hockey game finally began.
Without Kevin Westgarth, Blair Jones, Chris Butler, and Ladislav Smid on the ice, the Flames were down to four defenseman throughout almost 60 minutes of hockey. Luckily, for the Flames, Mark Giordano led the defensive fight that held off the Canucks for the rest of the game.
Yet, the lingering feelings from the line brawl at the beginning of the game reared its ugly head again when Shane O’Brien and Zack Kassian got into a tilt as well and ended up with matching misconducts. The first period was all about setting the tone and intensity for the rest of the game.
The second period was all about the goal scoring. On the powerplay, Mark Giordano opened the scoring and put the Flames on the board and, even though the Canucks tied it up with a goal from Ryan Kesler, Matt Stajan came back at the beginning of the third period to put the Flames ahead by one for the second time during the game.
The third period and overtime was a lot of back and forth play by two teams who really needed to win the game to prove a point. It didn’t take long for Vancouver to tie the game again and take it into overtime. In the end, overtime solved nothing and the game went into the fifth frame of a shootout.
Joe Colborne was the only Flames player to score in the shootout, while a tying goal by Yannick Weber led Chris Higgins to win the game in the fifth round with a final score of 3-2.