CALGARY — The Baseball Gods wasted no time repaying the Texas Rangers for that sketchy go-ahead run in Game 5, smiting the Rangers with three consecutive errors in the bottom of the very same inning.
In the case of the Calgary Flames, much of the hockey world has expected the window of retribution to be much larger.
The way Calgary overachieved across 82 games and two rounds of the playoffs last season, with that un-Godly shooting percentage and all those third period comebacks, it was simply unrepeatable. As GM Brad Treliving told pretty much anyone with a digital recorder this fall, “Our season last year was like winning the Masters — while sinking eighteen 40-foot putts.”
On Friday night in Winnipeg we saw a microcosm of that:
Calgary had just 20 shots, but where last season that would be enough for three goals, some stellar goaltending by Ondrej Pavelec limited the Flames to one. Then, with 1:35 left, Johnny Gaudreau made an errant drop pass to Jiri Hudler. Dustin Byfuglien gobbled it up, went wide on Dennis Wideman, and tossed a puck at the Flames net from a horrible angle.
It was the kind of goal in the final moments of the third period that Calgary scored on so many nights last season. This season however, it was Flames goalie Karri Ramo who botched the Byfuglien shot, and the Flames who left the building shaking their tuques — the way so many teams had walked out of the Saddledome last season.
“Sometimes in this business, just like in life, you get free lessons where you dodge the bullet. (In Winnipeg) we didn’t dodge the bullet,” said Flames head coach Bob Hartley. “It was a kick in the butt. I felt we could have left with one point at least. But we left bare-handed.”
Empty-handed, bare-handed… Whatever, the Flames were 1-3 with an 0-2 record at the Saddledome heading into their Hockey Night in Canada affair against the winless Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.
They’re facing adversity earlier this season than last, with TJ Brodie breaking a bone in his hand, and Lance Bouma now on the shelf with a broken fibula. The sophomore Gaudreau makes that rookie mistake that he didn’t make as a rookie, costing them a game. They’ve got three goalies in town, but not one who seems able to steal a game the way someone always did last season.
To captain Mark Giordano, it seems as if the Flames are hoping to skip right to the success part, bypassing the painful process that preceded it through the entire 2014-15 season.
“We’ve been guilty of over-trying to make the pretty plays, the highlight reel goals,” Giordano said. “Our system is what it is. We’re a hard-working team that back checks well, and we’re aggressive. When we get into trouble, it’s been sitting back, watching, hoping for something good to happen.”
Last season, somehow, it all went so right. We’re only four games into the new campaign, but anyone who knows how breaks work in this game is fearful of what might be coming Calgary’s way.
“Some games we’re going to make mistakes where there is no price on the tag,” mused Hartley. “But this year there has been a huge price tag on every mistake that we’ve made.”
It’s early, but Hartley can see a line in his future that might be hard not to cross.
Going back to a time of success is currency for every coach in every sport. But when your success came on the back of the second highest shooting percentage in the NHL, a third period/overtime goals differential of plus-36 and your top eight scorers each having career years statistically, there is a level of impossibility that comes with trying to look backwards.
“As much as we don’t want to live in the past, once in a while it’s good to go back and look at the recipe from last year,” Hartley said. “You know, my wife still uses grandma’s chocolate cake recipe. It’s an old one.”
But a good one, we trust.
If only it were as easy as measuring some flour, cocoa, and busting a few eggs.
“The recipe, it’s a recipe that worked for us,” said Hartley. “The only thing we can’t do from last year is sit on that success. ‘Cause that success is gone.
“And we have no ring to show (for it).”
