Calgary Flames: What went wrong with their powerplay?

In the Calgary Flames season-opener, their biggest downfall was their own powerplay. Let’s take a look what went wrong.

So… the season-opener was fun, right? The Calgary Flames played the Vancouver Canucks in the season-opener, hoping to beat their eight-game season-opening losing streak. Unfortunately, they couldn’t, and they continue to lead the league with nine straight losses. The Canucks, on the other hand, lead the league with five straight wins in their openers.

Although the Canucks won 5-2 last night, the Flames didn’t play that awful of a game. Especially at even-strength, the Flames completely outplayed the Canucks, especially in the final two periods. But the refs were completely against the Flames and kept giving them powerplays when they knew very well they weren’t going to score.

The Flames went 0/7 on the PP last night. It was dreadful, to say the least. But why was their powerplay so terrible? Let’s look deeper into what actually happened.

In the first period, the Flames had two powerplays. The first PP, they had no shots. We need to give a lot of credit to Chris Tanev on the penalty-kill on that one because he was a big reason the Flames couldn’t get anything going. On their second PP, they had two shots and it actually looked much better than their first. They had two scoring chances, one of which was a high-danger chance. But credit to Jacob Markstrom who was on his A-game.

In the second period, the Flames powerplay completely crumbled. They had two PPs, only one shot, and no scoring chances. In fact, they only managed one shot attempt as well. It was a mess and the Flames looked completely out of place.

In the third period, the Flames had three powerplays. They had seven shot attempts, three shots, two scoring chances, and no high-danger chances (stats taken from naturalstattrick.com). I will say though, the Flames PP did start to get a little better by about the sixth powerplay. I mean, sixth time’s the charm, right? They finally stopped with all the drop passes and stretch drop passes, which have never worked.

And they finally had a tip-in from Matthew Tkachuk, but of course, no goal.

The problem with the Flames inability to even set up on the powerplay left them shooting completely from the perimeter. In fact, they only had about two shots that actually came from within the circle that didn’t miss the net.

There have been stats that have shown that slapshots from the blue-line aren’t as effective anymore unless you have someone in front to tip them in. This brings us to our next issue: Utilization of Matthew Tkachuk.

Last season, Tkachuk’s primary role on the PP was to just be planted in front of the net and act as a screen/tip the pucks in. And it worked. He led the Calgary Flames in PP goals with 10. This year, on the first PP unit, the Flames used Elias Lindholm for that role.

The first PP unit consisted of Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Elias Lindholm, Matthew Tkachuk, and Mark Giordano. A suggestion I would like to see is replacing Lindholm with Austin Czarnik, and planting Tkachuk in front of the net instead. We’ve seen it work at times last season and with someone like Czarnik, who looked quite good in the game, could work well with that line. We also saw Czarnik somewhat shift to the second line with Tkachuk and Mikael Backlund throughout the game, and that line was easily the best line all night. It seems like Czarnik plays well with Tkachuk, and them two together on the PP could work.

Oh, and enough with all the drop passes. Please. I can’t take anymore drop passes. Some clean PP entries would be *chef kissing fingers*.

The Calgary Flames powerplay was dreadful. But it was only game #1. Bill Peters seems like he listens well and Geoff Ward is one of the best PP coaches in the game. I have faith that they’ll quickly turn it around and make this a focus in their next few practices.

Is it blind faith? I mean, it is the Flames, so probably. But I never learn.