With their miracle win on Saturday, don't count out the Flames just yet.
EDMONTON — By the time the Calgary Flames step on the ice again Wednesday, the adrenalin from this win will be a distant memory.
And when you really think it through, eking out a 5-4, come-from-behind victory against a bunch of guys named Chris VandeVelde and Teemu Hartikainen doesn’t exactly inspire a ton of confidence.
But for one night, what the Calgary Flames did at Rexall Place in Edmonton left them feeling like maybe, just maybe, this highly unlikely playoff drive might have some chops.
"We knew we didn’t have anything left to save it for," said defenceman Steve Staios, scorer of the heroic tying goal at 18:05 of the third period, not 15 minutes after the Flames had fallen behind the Edmonton Oilers by a 4-1 count. "We knew, going out for the third period, that our season was on the line."
Out east, the New York papers were talking for a long time about the New Jersey Devils "Preposterous Dream."
It now belongs to the Calgary Flames, down 4-1 early in the third period to the 30th place Edmonton Oilers.
They had 15 minutes to extricate themselves, and of course, it was captain Jarome Iginla who fired home a laser beam through a screen on the power play, his second of the night. Then Curtis Glencross accepted a gift from Oilers defenceman Jim Vandermeer, and buried the chance.
Finally, at 18:05 of the third, Steve Staios pinched on a loose puck, rifling a shot to the far side to tie the game at 4-4.
"Oh my God," said Iginla. "That last one was great. It felt as good as any goal we’ve scored all year."
Alex Tanguay was the only one of six shooters to score in the shootout. It was all Calgary required, as Miikka Kiprusoff made up for a shaky night by stoning three Oilers in the shootout.
"It was our playoff lives on the line tonight," said Iginla. "In the third period, once we were down, we just played. That’s how we’d been playing for the past three months. Hopefully, that’s a reminder that that’s the way we’ve got to play now."
Objectively speaking, the Flames still appear to be hooped, standing ninth in the Western Conference with just five games to play.
Chicago is one point ahead and Dallas one behind — but both have three games in hand on Calgary.
By the time the Flames lace up Wednesday at the Saddledome with Anaheim in town, Chicago will have played twice. However, those two games occur in Detroit and in Boston respectively — two extremely tough buildings in which to accrue points.
Dallas plays just once, in Phoenix, where it is very plausible they could lose. Because if you saw the game Calgary played in Saturday night in Edmonton, well you’d have an easier time believing that maybe, just maybe, the stars are aligned for this team.
"We knew they were a team pushing for the playoffs and that were going to sell the farm to try to do it. It would have been great," said disappointed Oiler Ryan Jones, who scored the fourth Oilers goal and had a plus-2 evening. "If you look at the game in its entirety, for the first 50 minutes we showed signs that we were going to be a great hockey team."
The three stars said it all:
No. 1 — Jarome Iginla.
No. 2 — Teemu Hartikainen.
No. 3 — Olli Jokinen.
Two household names, and one guy whose name you’d need three tries just to spell it right.
In the overtime, VandeVelde was taking (and losing) all of the draws for an Oilers team that was without its top two centres: Shawn Horcoff and Sam Gagner; top line wingers Ales Hemsky and Taylor Hall, and two of their three best defencemen, Ryan Whitney and Kurtis Foster.
Iginla turned in yet another heroic performance, naturally, when his team needed it the most.
He had two goals (Nos. 35 and 36 on the season) and an assist, and stood in the dressing room afterwards smiling like a kid whose team had just advanced in the Quebec Pee-Wee tournament.
"That was pretty wild. It felt as good as any we’ve won all year," he said. "(Edmonton) played hard, aggressive hockey. Like they had nothing to lose. We played like we were trying not to lose for the first two periods."
And somehow, in the end, they won. Calgary lives to fight another day.
They’d better fight a lot smarter from here on in though. This rope-a-dope came in just under the wire.
