EDMONTON — The Hockey Gods simply couldn’t stand by and watch it any longer.
The Calgary Flames, The Big Guy’s favorite son of a year ago, had been left to part their own Red Sea up until Saturday night in Edmonton, piling up all those “worst this” and “highest that” stats that befall a team that has found itself on the other side of that hockey voodoo they call “puck luck.”
So, with people around the hockey world actually using the term “must-win” just a dozen games into Calgary’s season, the great goal judge in the sky checked up on his old favorite son Saturday night at Rexall Place.
He showed up early, when fourth-liner Brandon Bollig deftly deflected a puck to open the scoring just 1:58 in, then hung around to help Oilers goalie Cam Talbot gift-wrap a giveaway empty-netter for Michael Frolik. Then, after the Oilers made it 2-1, a puck hit Michael Frolik in the foot and caught the corner past Talbot.
It was the kind of goal Calgary simply has not had this season. Hard work that equaled good fortune, an equation that was there a season ago but has been absent this fall.
“We were fortunate to get a bounce,” winger David Jones admitted. “That’s what they say: You play the right way and they come. It would be nice for a few (more) of those to come our way.”
But the bounce Jones was talking about hadn’t happened yet. First, Lady Luck popped into the NHL’s Situation Room in Toronto to disallow an Oilers goal on one of those coin flip calls that could have gone either way.
Goalie Karri Ramo was in no way obstructed from moving across his crease to try and make an impossible save, but there was contact spotted, and that makes for a disallowed goal now.
Still, Calgary managed to blow their third two-goal lead of the night as Edmonton somehow stuck with this game until the dying seconds, the teams playing out the final ticks before overtime.
So, for the fun of it, Frolik threw one at the net from behind the goal line with 8.7 seconds left in the third. Talbot, who wore the goat horns on Edmonton this Halloween, somehow allowed it to bounce off his side and into the goal for a Flames win.
“No excuses — that puck can’t cross the line,” said Talbot.
It was as bad a game-winner as ever you’ll see. For Calgary, it felt like gold.
“I’d like to come in here and protect him. That’s what teammates and coaches do,” Edmonton head coach Todd McLellan said after the game. “But it’s hard to do in a situation like that. It was a save he should have made. He knows that.”
This was some heavy lifting for the Hockey Gods, but in fairness, Calgary hadn’t had half this many good breaks in their previous 11 games. It had to happen.
“That’s fair to say,” captain Mark Giordano said. “Tonight we got, yeah, a bunch of them. It felt like it was going to keep going the way it’s been going. We’d block a shot, it would go back to them for an open net. We got a couple of good (breaks) — hopefully we can use this win for some positive energy.”
In the end, Calgary deserved this one. And Edmonton certainly did not.
The Oilers mailed in Period 1 against Montreal in their previous game, fell behind 3-0, then stormed back to win 4-3. Saturday they started very slowly again, trailed by two all night, and then tied the game midway through the third.
“It’s a bad recipe,” McLellan said. “We should smell blood and go after it. That’s a bad scent tonight.”
Just when they may have thought it was OK to play come-from-behind, fire wagon hockey, Talbot coughed up an awful goal to Frolik — who had the weirdest hat trick you’ll ever see. It’s like Jones said: When you play the right way, you get breaks. When you don’t…
“We had a chance to separate ourselves from a rival, and we didn’t take advantage of it,” McLellan said. “The focus will be on the bad goal at the end, but I talked to our guys about using the full 60 minutes. We didn’t.
“It’s a lesson learned. Painful lessons for our group right now. Real painful lessons.”
You wonder when the teaching will ever stop here in Edmonton, and the learning will commence.
