Calgary Flames win as Jaromir Jagr scores first goal as a Flame

It finally happened! Jaromir Jagr finally scores his first goal in a Calgary Flames sweater. Some more firsts happened tonight as well.

Calgary Flames fans have had to remain patient, but Jaromir Jagr has finally scored his first goal as a Flame in a 6-3 win over the Detroit Red Wings. Jagr now has 1918 career points. And his goal came from a nice feed from Johnny Gaudreau on a two-on-one for the Flames.

That wasn’t the only first of the night. Mark Jankowski also had his first ever NHL goal tonight. And who assisted on that? Well, it was none other than Jaromir Jagr! Janko became the 12th player to have their first ever NHL goal assisted by Jagr. Good on the Sportsnet guys for figuring this out.

The goal wasn’t exactly the uh… the prettiest. But hey, we’ll take it.

Another player who assisted on that Janko goal was Sam Bennett who finally got his first point of the season. Bennett’s been having some offensive problems and the Flames, in general, have been having problems gaining some secondary scoring. Let’s hope this third line keeps up that momentum. With Jagr’s goal and assist tonight, he’s still quite the force at 45 years old.

Johnny Gaudreau continues to rack up the points. He had two goals and an assist tonight. Bringing his point total up to 22 points where he’s third in the NHL. Gaudreau’s now on a six-game point streak. While everyone’s excited about Gaudreau, let’s also not forget that Sean Monahan is also on a six-game point streak tonight with an assist he had on Johnny Gaudreau’s goal.

Tonight, Rasmus Andersson drew into the lineup instead of Matt Bartkowski. And boy did that end up being a good idea. Andersson and Brett Kulak both had a CF% a 5v5 of 54.84% – the highest of the defensive duos on the ice tonight. Bartkowski so far on the season has a CF% of 44.08%. The two players below him for that category have both been waived. While Andersson didn’t have any points, Kulak had two assists tonight and they both had a +/- of +2.

While the Calgary Flames were severely outshot in the second period (21-10), let’s remember that the Flames also had three penalties in the second period. And their special teams still seem to struggle. Tonight they were 0/2 with the man advantage and were 1/3 on the penalty kill. However, one of the Red Wings’ goals were scored moments after their power play ended from the sustained pressure they kept while on the PP. So the Flames still have work to do in cleaning up that area.

Mike Smith came back from allowing five goals on just 21 shots against the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday evening and stopped 38 of 41 shots he faced tonight. There was a slight worry in the second period when he stopped a puck with his hand and seemed to have some discomfort in his wrist. But after getting it checked out on the bench, he seemed to be alright. Petr Mrazek, on the other hand, allowed five goals on 34 shots.

Next: Top five Flames players through first 15 games

All in all, this was a great win for the Flames and it was a fun game to watch. This is the first time the Flames have won by more than one goal since their 5-2 goal against the Canucks on Oct. 14.