Calgary Flames lose first game in OT vs Columbus Blue Jackets
By Ramina Shlah
All good things must come to an end at some point. The Calgary Flames’ perfect record in extra time came to an end tonight vs. the Columbus Blue Jackets.
It wasn’t a great game for the Calgary Flames, but on the plus side, at least they still got a point! After a whole game of Mike Smith basically bailing the team out, they disappointed him in overtime when they couldn’t help him out by getting the shutout. The Flames lost 1-0 in OT against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Heading into the game, the Flames were 5-0 in extra time. 3-0 in OT and 2-0 in the shootout. But all good things come to an end at some point. And that includes Johnny Gaudreau‘s point streak, which also came to an end tonight.
The Flames were quite sloppy tonight, especially in the second period. And as good as Gaudreau has been, not only offensively, but he’s been making some great defensive plays as well, he was also sloppy tonight. In the first two periods, the Flames were having trouble in the neutral zone, they weren’t having clean entries, and they were getting the puck taken away quite a bit at the blue-line. All in all, it wasn’t a solid effort and the only reason they got a point out of the night is because of Mike Smith.
After 60 minutes of play, Smith made 39 saves to keep the Flames still in the game. Sergei Bobrovsky on the other side of the rink made 20 saves to also keep the score at 0-0. The Flames were absolutely dominated in the second period, getting outshot 12-3. In OT, Bobrovsky made two saves while Mike Smith made one save, and the other goal, unfortunately, his defenceman let him down. Only seven Flames skaters today had a CF% (5v5) above 50%. The highest going to Matthew Tkachuk (are we even surprised?).
Beside his own net, for some reason, TJ Brodie made a big mistake and lost the puck. This led to the Columbus goal and the game-winner. Brodie definitely owes Smith some beers after that. Smith has also been incredible on the road so far. Heading into this game, he was 6-1-0 with a 0.946 sv%. He now sits at 6-1-1 and 0.950 sv%. So I mean, his numbers didn’t quite get affected in a negative way.
This overtime was quite the matchup since these two teams are the best two teams past regulation since 2014-15. Since then, heading into the game, the Flames are 42-18 in extra time with a win% of 0.700. The Blue Jackets are 39-22 with a win% of 0.639.
In the second period, Glen Gulutzan made an interesting line change by switching the places of Sam Bennett and Kris Versteeg. So Bennett remained on the fourth line for the rest of the night and Versteeg on the third. It’ll be interesting to see if this remains for the next game or if we may be seeing Bennett be a healthy scratch on Friday too. Bennett has just one goal and two assists in 21 games this season.
Johnny Gaudreau’s 10-game point streak, six-game goal streak, and five-game multi-point streak all came to an end tonight as well. Up until tonight, he had the longest active win-streak in the league with those 10 games. He still sits in third place in the NHL for scoring which is still an incredible feat.
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All in all, tonight wasn’t the best effort by the Calgary Flames. While they’ve been playing good hockey lately, tonight was a poor showing. And they absolutely cannot play like this on Friday if they want to walk away with two points.