ANAHEIM — Your beer league team just got its ass kicked good and proper. What do the boys do? Wings and draught beer, of course.
The Calgary Flames got their rear ends handed to them by Anaheim in Game 1, clobbered 6-1 by the Ducks. What do they do?
Steaks and higher-end beer.
"And no coaches," said Joe Colborne, of a Friday night team dinner and bonding sessions that came with the blessing of head coach Bob Hartley, who may or may not have told his guys to have a cold beer or two together, with an extra day between games.
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"Sometimes you need to get away from the rink, hang out as just the guys," Colborne said. "I don’t think we said one word about hockey. It was awesome. We have such a fun group, some real good guys, a few characters."
"We’re in the playoffs, we’re a young group," Hartley said. "You need to have fun. There is so much pressure you can’t control, that the pressure you can control, it’s our job to keep the boys loose."
No one in the hockey world — outside the 403 area code — is loving the Flames much these days. They’re too small. They’ve run out of luck. The goaltending isn’t good enough. The first line is banged up.
In short, Calgary doesn’t have a prayer versus Anaheim. Which means, of course, that the Flames have the hockey world exactly where they want them.
"So many times, we were left for dead (this season)," Hartley said. "We always showed great resiliency. We battled back. That’s who we are, and that’s what we want to cultivate."
Hockey history is littered with Cinderella stories like this one, but in all my years, I’m not sure I’ve seen a team hop off the coroner’s slab as many times as this Flames club has this season. The hockey world has literally pulled the metaphorical sheet over the faces of the Flames on at least five occasions this season, starting in early October, one game into the season.
Calgary lost its home opener to Vancouver, a fitting kickoff to a 28th- or 29th-place finish, right? Words like "buried" and "done" were heard around the NHL — especially inside the Saddledome press box — as folks filed out of the Saddledome that night, but fittingly, the Flames went north and beat the crap out of Edmonton to open their trip. They would win at Nashville, at Chicago and at Winnipeg, going 4-2 on the Trip of Death.
There was the five-game trip through Vancouver, Arizona and the three California teams in January that was going to crush the Flames — until they went 4-1.
Or that seven-game journey when the Brier came to Calgary. There was no way the Flames would sustain their magic through that nightmare, remember? Well, they went 4-2-1 on the road trip, and in the final intermission of that seven-game opus the Flames players sat in their dressing room in Ottawa staring at a 4-0 deficit.
Tired, minus their injured captain Mark Giordano — who’d gone down after Game 2 of the trip — the charter waiting on the tarmac to get them home, that scenario had "coast through the final 20 minutes and get out of Dodge" written all over it.
So what did Calgary do? They scored four times in the third period, before losing to the Senators in a shootout. "That was the first time I’ve ever come out of a loss and felt good," Colborne said, shaking his head at the memory.
"I remember when we were coming out of training camp, and all the experts were picking us to be 26th, 27th, 28th," he said, looking a reporter in the eye. "We’ve had the mindset from Day 1 — we don’t care what you guys say. People were believing in us, then Gio goes down and they quit believing in us."
And Calgary has played .667 hockey since losing their captain and MVP.
Look, unless you see the Flames as Stanley Cup winner in June, eventually one of these hurdles is going to be too high. At some point, the club that radio broadcaster Derek Wills calls the "Find a way Flames" are going to run out of road map.
Today, we ask the question: Is Anaheim that hurdle? Are the much bigger and vastly more experienced Ducks going to be the first question this season that the Flames just can’t answer?
Or, like we’ve said of Calgary after so many second intermissions when they’re trailing by a goal, do the Flames have the Ducks exactly where they want them?
"We’re not at the top of the mountain," Hartley said, deliciously evoking a favourite mantra of ’80s Flames coach Badger Bob Johnson, for whom it was always "a great day for hockey."
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On Sunday, the hockey world will tune in expecting another beat down. So many who never allowed themselves to enjoy this ride, who never gave the Flames a chance — more than once, I was one of those — will have dismissed Calgary, again, before the puck even drops on Sunday night.
And Hartley, like Johnson before him, will have his team believing they can do this. That, no matter how many hundreds of thousands across the NHL think they are done, the people inside the four walls of that visitors’ dressing room — and the legions back home in Calgary — still believe.
"I always tell my players," Hartley said, "don’t live your life trying to prove people wrong.
"The people who believe in you? Prove them right."