The Flames season came to screeching halt after a phantom goal was scored against the Ducks.
CALGARY -- This one came down to the pictures. The still frames that the war room in Toronto didn't have of the goal Matt Stajan knows he scored, and thus, the coroner's photos of another Flames season, toe-tagged and pointed towards the first tee.
The dream died Wednesday night for Calgary, somewhere between Ray Emery's blocker, and the cavernous gap in Ryan Getzlaf's memory. A 4-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks left the Flames three points back of the eighth-place Chicago Blackhawks while having played two more games.
"One hundred percent. It was in," said Stajan, who had a puck bounce off of his shoulder during a second period scrum in the Anaheim crease. "It sat there on (Emery's) blocker. I guess there's a lot of black on his jersey … I don't know what the ref was looking at."
Calgary was trailing 2-1 with 5:10 to play in the second period when, after a lengthy review, the National Hockey League's command centre in Toronto simply could not find the requisite evidence to overturn referee Gord Dwyer's call that the puck did not cross the line.
"I'm telling you, from my view over top, it was in," Stajan said. "That's all I can say, Too bad they got it wrong."
Adding mystery to insult, camera angles showed Getzlaf grabbing the puck and disposing of it nefariously after the whistle. Then, after the game, Lubomir Visnovsky said, "I tried to push the puck out of the net," causing the Flames to believe they should have at least been given a penalty shot.
Of course, in the long-practiced hockey tradition, Getzlaf denied having had a hand in the play after the game, making sure not to infer that he had perhaps hoodwinked the zebras.
"Everybody was scrambling," he said. "We had five guys in the crease. They did a great job taking as long as they did to get the call right."
"I knew it was close. I thought the ref called it dead on a hand pass," Emery said. "I've had a lot of those against me, so I'll take whatever I can get in that position."
The hardest part for Calgary? Not four minutes later, a long Visnovsky volley wound its way through a double screen set by Corey Perry and Getzlaf, banked off of Flames defenceman Cory Sarich's glove, and nestled into the twine behind a blinded Kiprusoff.
"That third goal was a tough one," head coach Brent Sutter said. "It's a tough loss."
It was the classic one-two punch, winding a Flames team that simply wore out its welcome on the comeback trail of late. They scored early in the third but could muster no more offence, now losers of seven of their past nine games.
Indeed, the white-hot pace Calgary had set since being a 14th-place club on Dec. 23 has seriously cooled. It's official: There will be two Canadian teams in the National Hockey League playoffs this spring, after the Ducks stopped, dropped and rolled over the Flames playoff aspirations Wednesday.
"It's easy to use that (non-) goal as an excuse," said Tom Kostopoulis. "It's not the reason we lost. We took too many penalties."
On a rare evening when Teemu Selanne looked his age, the Ducks simply looked elsewhere for production, as good teams tend to do. Corey Perry stepped up to the plate big-time, and was simply too much for the Flames to handle Wednesday, finishing with two goals and three points in 23:57 of ice time.
Goals number 45 and 46 were only two lines from Perry's resume from this game, however. There was a tome that doesn't make the score sheet, from a guy who incorporates a lethal dose of his junior coach Dale Hunter's game into his own.
Perry defended himself, set a nice screen on the Visnovsky goal, took the opportunity to run Kiprusoff when nudged by a Calgary defenceman, drilled Kostopoulos when aggravated… This guy, he's all hockey player.
And Calgary? It looks likes they're all done, with only four games left to play and three points in arrears.
"We're not quittin'. You never know what can happen," a defiant Sutter said. "It's still that chance. It's still there. We have to get on the road here, and pay our butts off. See what happens.
"There's still life there," he repeated. "What else do you want me to say?"
