Flames Win Fifth in A Row, Move to Second in Pacific

Calgary Flames 5 vs Toronto Maple Leafs 2

Scoring

First Period

None

Second Period

TOR [1] Sandin (2) (Nylander (25), Tavares (26)) 3:49

CGY [1] Mangiapane (23) (Backlund (13), Coleman (10)) 4:13

CGY [2] Hanifin (5) (Andersson (21), Tkachuk (28)) 13:03

CGY [3] Kylington (6) (Hanifin (17), Backlund (14)) PPG 13:35

CGY [4] Lindholm (17) (Gaudreau (37), Tanev (13)) 15:54

Third Period

CGY [5] Andersson (2) (Tkachuk (29), Hanifin (18)) 1:16

TOR [2] Bunting (14) (Matthews (23), Liljegren (7) 5:06

Game Notes:

-Good D: 3 of the 5 Flames goals came from their blueline tonight, as the 2015 trio of Andersson, Kylington, and Hanifin all found the back of the net. Hanifin added two assists to quietly have 10 points in his last 9 games, while Kylington extends his point streak to four. All three pairings played fairly well despite the obvious lapses in shot smothering, including Nikita Zadorov’s massive hit in the first period that really engaged Flames fans fighting a sea of blue.

-Home Cooked Bread: With a majority of remaining games set to be played in Alberta, bringing Andrew Mangiapane’s offensive breakout that he’s displayed on the road back home is vital. He’s seemingly breaking out of a bizarre slump, as his crucial goal tonight brings his Saddledome total to 3 in his past 2 games. Just 24 seconds after Rasmus Sandin opened the scoring on a hard-fought play, Mangiapane tied the game right back up for an overwhelmed Flames team who was relying too much on their goaltender.

-A New Hope?: With all the attention fixed rightfully on the Flames top line, and perhaps equally so on the struggles of most everyone else, some impressive chemistry appears to be developing between another Flames line. The Backlund-Mangiapane-Coleman trio combined for 4 goals and 10 points in the back-to-back, and looked equally as deadly as the Flames top trio recently. With the team’s needs needing to be finalized within the next month, it’s good to see a second solid line developing.

-Stop it: First off, full credit to Jacob Markstrom for another solid game, as he wins on consecutive nights. But that’s a problem. With their eyes set on more than just making the playoffs, the Flames will need their elite starter in top form by season’s end. Playing a goaltender on back-to-backs is nearly unheard of, and doing it twice now in two weeks seems almost to be punishing Dan Vladar. I’m not sure on what the procedure is for determining the starter on a given night, but the Flames need to figure out their timeshare and fast. As well as he played, we all saw Markstrom make some questionable decisions handling the puck, as well as an attempted chase of Timothy Liljegren. These are all red flags of Markstrom’s fatigue-induced decision making that cost him games last season.

by Gordie Taylor