First off news of the day, the Calgary Flames extend the contract of head coach Ryan Huska. It's a two year extension and the right decision for the Flames going forward. I've really liked the message from Huska since he took over the role for the 2023-24 season, the room seems to take that message of being a hard team to play against to heart.
Second the game against the Vancouver Canucks was, well it happened. The Flames got blown out of the building 8-1 and a lot of that was the play of Ivan Prosvetov and Devin Cooley, who happen to be in a tight battle to be the backup. Some defensive rookie moments from Zayne Parekh, which is expected, and an inability once again to beat the speed, pressure and north-south game the Canucks were playing.
Add on the injury to Jonathan Huberdeau, who while driving the net had a head on mask collision with the goaltender, and the concern is starting to build. It's still preseason so the end result doesn't really matter but, it's getting close to playing games for real.
Ivan Prosvetov got the start and was expected to play half of the game, gave up a goal on the first shot he faced, and the movement he has is something the Canucks have picked up on. On the first goal by Brock Boeser, Prosvetov started out well outside the crease and lost his position and went to far into the crease, and gave up the glove side.
All of the goals against Prosvetov were to the glove side, except for the tipped goal. Overall Prosvetov played 31:24, giving up five goals on 19 shots for a save percentage of 0.74%.
On the other hand Devin Cooley gave up a short side goal that I still don't understand how it went in. Playing 28:24 and giving up 3 goals on 7 shots, but by that time the Canucks were playing a much more defensive style game choosing to dump and chase more than play in zone.
I don't mean to be overly critical of the goaltenders, I'm sure they're good people. But when it comes to one of 64 jobs in the best hockey league in the world mistakes can cost jobs. The backup decision is more difficult now than before as neither tender has taken charge of the job.
Now for the good stuff (what little there was) Matvei Gridin looks more confident the deeper into camp he goes, managing to block a couple of shots in the first and look like he got hit by a fly instead of a chuck of vulcanized rubber. Morgan Frost also stood out to me as a player who has his confidence back and playing with the speed the Flames expected to get when they traded for him last season.