Game 79 Recap: IGGY

For a variety of reasons, tonight’s recap is written by Justin Azevedo, the host of Matchsticks and Microphones. You can follow him on Tumblr here and Twitter here.

What a game.

It started out slow, with some back and forth action for the first 10 minutes or so. The Flames weren’t able to generate anything and after killing off an interference penalty from Mikael Backlund, they took an undisciplined Too Many Men bench minor. That particular penalty kill, Flames fans had a mild panic attack when Robyn Regehr blocked a shot and was slow to get up. He went down the tunnel for a couple minutes but did eventually return.

Just before the end of the penalty, after a spectacular blocker save by Miikka

Kiprusoff, the puck hung out in the slot and Rene Bourque was too slow to clear it-

leaving a wide open net for Matt D’Agostini to score his 21st of the year. After that

though, there wasn’t a lot of action (as evidenced by the scoring chances & Corsi)

until the 17 minute mark of the second period when Jarome Iginla tipped a Anton

Babchuk slapper past Halak. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get it past the post. The

Flames parlayed this pressure into a bench minor penalty for the blues, and while

both Curtis Glencross and Iginla had some great chances, Halak kept the biscuit out

of the jar.

From then on, the two teams increased the tempo of the game tenfold. Rushes both ways, but again the end result had the puckstoppers doing their jobs admirably. Halak was particularly stellar, making a nice acrobatic play to block a tipped Babchuk shot wide. After a turnover by Cory Sarich in front of the net, Alexander Steen cross-checked him from behind, leading to another power play for the Flames. That was cut short by a Tom Kostopolous interference call and just as TKO was stepping out of the box, Shattenkirk threaded a pass to David Backes, who took advantage of the open backdoor for his 29th of the season. Interesting non-call, as Backes checked Sarich (who was nowhere near the puck) about 5 seconds before.

I counted 4 scoring chances for Iggy-one tip, a shot and two minor breaks-before he actually put away his 38th of the year, a nice top ched backhand over the blocker of Halak. As usual, a great pass from Alex Tanguay to set it up. The Flames kept up the pressure through the rest of the period and into the third, where at 8:01 Jarome and Tanguay converted a nice two on one give and go, resulting in Tanguay’s 20th, Iginla’s 999th point and Daymond Lankgow’s first point since his neck injury.

With 8 minutes left, Kipper basically saved the game for the Flames by catching and holding a puck on his skate-while also having his butt planted firmly on the ice.

Iggy’s 1000th Point

Three Stars

1. Jarome Iginla-Don’t think I need to say anything except “wow”.

2. Daymond Lankgow-First game back and the dude plays 15 minutes, with a

+2.

3. Jaroslav Halak-Plenty of big saves. This game could’ve gotten a lot uglier.

by Arik Knapp