Calgary Flames Lose Two in a Row – Remain in Wildcard Spot
By Ramina Shlah
The Calgary Flames have lost their second game in a row, a feat they haven’t done in two months. The Nashville Predators took this one 3-1.
The Calgary Flames lose their second game in a row and are now on a losing streak. Boy, we haven’t said that in a while, hey? Two months, actually, to be exact. The Flames have not lost more than one game in a row since the end of January, just about two months now. Since January 24th, they’re 4-0-0 following a loss.
The Flames lost this one 3-1 to the Nashville Predators.
They’re also now 2-3-0 since their ten-game win streak.
Even though the Flames out-shot, out-hit, and out-blocked the Preds, the Preds won where it really counts – by finding the back of the net. In the third period, it was 2-1 for the Preds with chances on both ends, but after sloppy plays in the Flames own zone, the Preds made it 3-1 with eight minutes left.
The Flames are definitely feeling the effects without Brian Elliott between the pipes. Chad Johnson got the nod today and let in three goals on just 17 shots. He’s definitely not the Chad we all saw and loved in November and the Flames will most likely be going with Elliott next game. Johnson is now on a personal two-game losing skid.
Related Story: Is Brian Elliott the Calgary Flames' X-Factor?
But Johnson wasn’t the only factor in the loss tonight.
Special teams
The Calgary Flames are dealing with some power outages at the moment. And tonight was no different. They went 0/5 on the PP today with just four shots on those attempts. They’re 0/11 on the man advantage in their last five games. And the fact that they were even able to get five powerplays in a game, which rarely happens for this team, they really need to learn to start taking advantage of that.
Calgary Flames
Their penalty kill hasn’t been the worst thing in the world, however the Predators scored right as their powerplay expired tonight on one of the goals, really meaning the powerplay had a big factor.
This was also the first game back that Micheal Ferland played in since his illness. And even with many chances for not only him but for the team, he pinged one off the post, but couldn’t find the back of the net. Dougie Hamilton also pinged two off the posts in the first period.
Dougie managed to finally get one in the net in the second period, technically giving him a hat trick. I mean, not really. But let’s pretend so I can stop crying about this loss.
All in all, this wasn’t a horrible loss. The Flames weren’t completely outplayed or anything and they held their own. Unfortunately, they just made a couple of bad moves and there were some factors here and there (as mentioned above) which gave the Preds this game.
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The Flames are now just one point ahead of the Predators now and the Preds have one game on hand. The Flames shouldn’t get too confident and they need to start watching their backs, because any day now, they could be the ones who have to face the top seed in the Western conference.
And nobody wants to do that.