Calgary Flames 1 - Carolina Hurricanes 2

Complete Stats

Scoring

Calgary Flames

1st: 13:04- Lindholm (8) (Gaudreau/Hamonic)

2nd: None

3rd: None

Carolina Hurricanes

1st: None

2nd: None

3rd: 9:13- Svechnikov (4) (Wallmark), PPG 12:35- Svechnikov (5) (Hamilton/Teravainen

Recap

At some point the Flames will score some goals on the road right? The Flames were looking to win their 4th straight game in Raleigh tonight, but the Carolina Hurricanes had other ideas and they defeated the Flames 2-1 Tuesday night.

Calgary had all the momentum early on in this game and got the first goal of this contest off the stick of former Hurricane Elias Lindholm. Johnny Gaudreau would feed Lindholm with a beautiful pass that Lindholm would wire home past Petr Mrazek and the Flames would take an early 1-0 lead. A little over a minute later it looked like the Flames were off and running when Mikael Backlund would score his third goal of the season to give the Flames a 2-0 lead. Carolina would smartly challenge the goal, saying the Flames were offside and sure enough, they were. All the momentum the Flames had going for them seemed to disappear at that point and the Hurricanes would slowly start to take over.

Calgary would manage to hang on to their 1-0 lead for most of the rest of this contest and it was all thanks to David Rittich. The Flames top keeper once again was a rock in net, stopping the first 25 shots he saw before the Hurricanes would draw even and eventually take the lead for good. Midway through the third Andrei Svechnikov would channel his inner Gary Gait and score a ridiculous goal over the right shoulder of David Rittich and the Hurricanes would tie it 1-1. Matthew Tkachuk would take a stupid penalty late in the third and it would lead to the GWG for the Canes. Once again, the Flames found themselves victimized by Svechnikov. The 19 year old Russian would wire a wrist shot through some traffic and beat David Rittich on the PP, putting the Hurricanes up 2-1 for good.

Final Thoughts

You can forget, for a moment, that the Flames couldn’t score. They couldn’t even shoot the puck. It took 18+ minutes in the third period for Calgary put their first shot on goal. That’s just unacceptable. They would finish with an anemic four shots on goal in the period and unless you're bad at math or sports analysis, four shots isn’t even close enough to enough shots on goal in a period to win a game.

The blown leads are getting old as well. The Flames fell apart after Mikael Backlund’s goal was taken off the board and Carolina chipped away at the Flames confidence. This is the second straight game where the Flames blew a 1-0 lead and came away with an “L.”

David Rittich was once again the victim of a terrible team performance in front of him. In his last two starts Rittich has stopped 69 of the last 73 shots he’s faced while the offence in front of him has scored twice. Johnny Gaudreau, Matthew Tkachuk, Sean Monahan, Mark Giordano, Mikael Backlund, basically anyone NOT named Elias Lindholm has been absolutely useless when it comes to putting pucks in the net and helping out their goaltender.

Flame Of The Game

Photo by Gregg Forwerck/NHLI via Getty Images

David Rittich (G): Rittich was by far the best Flames player on the ice tonight and was left hanging out to dry again. There’s no excuse for him taking a loss in this game after the way he played. He was the reason the Flames had a 1-0 lead and the reason he gave them a chance to get back in the game. It’s a shame no one else has played up to his level this season.

What’s Next?

10/31: Calgary Flames @ Nashville Predators 6 PM MT