Calgary Flames get badly outplayed and shutout by Dallas Stars

The Calgary Flames get badly outplayed by the Dallas Stars and get shutout 2-0 by them. This was just an overall sloppy play by the team.

The Calgary Flames tried to find that late-game magic they had against the Philadelphia Flyers, but they couldn’t do it. They got badly outplayed in the first two periods and had about a good 15 minutes of play in the third period, but that wasn’t enough. They got shutout by the Dallas Stars 2-0.

Goaltender David Rittich kept them in the game by stopping 26 of 28 shots, but it wasn’t enough. He did have many great saves and it could have easily been a 4 or 5-0 game.

The Flames seemed tired and lacked energy. To be fair, I’m not completely butthurt about this loss. It’s their third game in four nights and they’ve been incredible over the last month. They’re bound to have a bad loss at some point. I guess they’re saving all their energy for Thursday when they play the top team in the league, the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Let’s check out how the Flames got here tonight.

First period

The best quality chances came from the Stars about two minutes in and David Rittich had to be sharp and saw through traffic to stop the puck.

A few minutes later, the Stars got another good chance due to the Calgary Flames inability to clear the zone and Valeri Nichushkin got another good shot on Rittich, but he stopped that as well.

Around the midway mark, the Stars were pushing and had a seeing-eye shot, but it hit the post. A few minutes later, after winning the defensive zone faceoff, the Stars put some pressure and Tyler Seguin got the puck in front of Rittich. Jamie Benn was in the right place at the right time and the puck hit his skate and into the net. 1-0 Stars.

Late in the period, the Stars took a penalty, which Seguin complained about, but nonetheless, it’s a Flames powerplay. To be fair and unbiased, it was a bit of a weak call, but hey. On the PP, it took about a minute for them to set up, but when they did, that top unit got a decent amount of zone time, but it went scoreless.

This period finished 1-0 for the Stars with them outshooting the Flames 14-6 and completely outplaying them at 5v5. That was not a good period for the Flames.

Second period

The Calgary Flames started the second period better than the first and had some decent pressure from the top-line. The Stars then answered back with a good scoring chance, but Rittich took that shot away.

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The Stars then continued with the pressure and the zone-time and had another few good shots on Rittich, but they were both stopped. That’s six shots the Flames have allowed in under three minutes to start the period.

After some more pressure from the Stars, it resulted in a Flames penalty, so the Stars got their first powerplay of the game. The Flames’ successful PK went to work and they didn’t let the Stars even barely set up.

After that successful PK, the Flames went down and tried setting it up which resulted in a Flames PP. Like their first one, they didn’t find much success with it. After that PP, Ben Bishop went behind the net to make a play and Garnet Hathaway crashed into him. Now, I’m not the biggest Hathaway fan and while it was a bad/dumb play by the forward, at the last second, Bishop put his head down, so not much Hathaway could do to avoid hitting the head. Regardless, it was interference and a bad play and that resulted in a Stars PP.

But like their first PK, this one was also successful for the Flames, so it was still a one-goal game. After that, Bishop ended up leaving the game, probably due to concussion protocol, and Anton Khudobin came in.

A few minutes later, Radek Faksa had the puck and Rittich tried to poke-check it off. It was a little too far for him and Faksa managed to get around him to score a goal and make it 2-0. I’m the biggest Rittich fan, but that goal was somewhat on him. However, to be fair to him, the score would be about 4-0 without him in net at this point since he wasn’t getting much help from his team.

After that, there was an accidental collision between Hathaway and Seguin but Roman Polak right away went after Hathaway, so he got an instigator penalty and the Flames got another powerplay. But again, like their powerplay has been all night, they couldn’t get a whole lot going so this went scoreless. They’ll start the second period on the powerplay for about 30 seconds.

This period was also quite bad for the Flames. The Stars, again, completely outplayed them at 5v5 and the shots this period were 12-6.

Third period

Ben Bishop returned for the third period and the Calgary Flames continued their powerplay. While they had good zone time for the rest of the PP, it still went scoreless. The Flames continued the pressure after the PP ended but again, no goal.

The Stars answered back with a good shift and Mattias Janmark had a good chance, but he hit the post.

After that, the Flames went on another powerplay, but they couldn’t get a lot of scoring chances and this one went scoreless again. After the PP ended, it seemed like the Flames finally woke up a little bit and put on some pressure.

The Flames continued to press hard and had lots of good chances, but some shots were blocked and others were saved by Bishop and the Flames could not find the back of the net.

With about a minute left, Rasmus Andersson absolutely rocketed that towards the net, but the puck hit the post. And that’s all the best chances from the Flames after taking the goalie out for the extra attacker.

This was a sloppy game by the Flames and they looked tired. But they were bound to have a bad loss at some point, so I’m not going to lose sleep over it.

Oh well, on to the next.