Round 2 Game 1 Stats Recap: Ducks Dismantle Flames

The Calgary Flames could not withstand the pressure put on by the Anaheim Ducks. Defensive breakdowns in Calgary’s own end led to high quality chances for Anaheim, resulting in six goals against. The Ducks top line was particularly effective; Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf had four points each.

Team Stats

Anaheim out-attempted, out-shot, and out-chanced the Flames. The biggest and most important discrepancy is with scoring chances, in which the Ducks had almost 70% of the games total 5v5 scoring chances. As we saw in the Calgary-Vancouver series, 75% of goals were scored off scoring chances. In last night's game, all 7 goals came off scoring chances. Needless to say it is critical to generate scoring chances, and this is exactly what Anaheim did. Calgary did not.

Player Contributions

We'll continue to look at player contribution numbers in this series. There are three types defined as follows:

• Shot Attempt Contribution (SA-Co): This is the total number of shot attempts a player contributes to, either as the shooter or the primary or secondary passer to set up the shot.

• Shot on Goal Contribution (SOG-Co): This is the total number of shots on goal a player contributes to, either as the shooter or the primary passer.

• Scoring Chance Contribution (SC-Co): This is the total number of scoring chances a player contributes to, either as the shooter who takes a shot from the home plate scoring chance area, or as the primary passer who sets up the shooter in the scoring chance area.

Shot Attempts

Shots on Goal

Scoring Chances

From the Flames perspective, the scoring chance chart is the saddest of them all. Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, and Jiri Hudler don’t even make it onto the chart, having contributed to zero scoring chances at 5v5. Hudler only played seven minutes in this game, leaving early in the second period with an injury. Calgary head coach Bob Hartley said after the game that both Hudler and Micheal Ferland are day-to-day. It’s hard to fathom how the Flames would make up for their absence, though the same was said in the wake of Mark Giordano‘s season-ending injury.

Despite four-point nights by both Perry and Getzlaf, it was the line of Ryan Kesler, Jakob Silfverberg and Matt Beleskey that contributed to the most shot attempts and scoring chances.

Summary

The Ducks had their way with the Flames. Calgary let Anaheim enter the offensive zone with ease, and unlike with Vancouver, Calgary could not keep the Ducks to the outside. Their size and skill was too much for Calgary's defenses, which consistently broke down. It's just one game, but injuries to Hudler and Ferland could be longer term liabilities. Regardless, the Flames need to find it within themselves to perform at a much higher level if they want a chance to beat Anaheim.

The war-on-ice Shot Plots

5v5

Powerplay

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by ‘C’ of Stats