TORONTO – You could drop a Sher-Wood in the visitors’ dressing room, but no one would be there to hear it.
One by one, the Calgary Flames silently filed off the Air Canada Centre ice Monday night after a 4-0 defeat in this, a once-in-a-season voyage home for the eight Greater Toronto Area players on the roster. One by one, without a word, they plopped their game sticks into a travel bag held open by an equipment manager.
When the doors swung open to reporters, the room was vacant. More silence.
Eventually, those called upon — the slumping goal scorer, the frustrated captain, the questionable No. 1 goalie — appeared to explain the disappointment Calgary fans must be feeling.
Ultimately, though, the Flames departed the way they arrived: sullen, hushed and gripping their sticks too hard to start the job, let alone finish ’er.
“We were down yesterday and this morning,” head coach Glen Gultuzan said before the game but after a muted plane ride east. They got whooped 7-3 in Saturday’s Battle of Alberta. “Everybody’s a little bit embarrassed.
“There’s a sense of, we need to get back to playing the way we need to play.”
Didn’t happen. Hasn’t happened much lately. But this one stung extra with all of those Ontario homecomings.
Toronto-born defenceman Mark Giordano figured he had “40 or 50 people for sure” in attendance watching him. (“The price is going up,” he quipped, pre-game.)
“When you’re around your family, you want to impress them,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock foreshadowed earlier in the day. “You don’t want to be a dog.”
Calgary started with jump but carelessly iced the puck late in the first period, setting up a lost defensive-zone draw that led to a Mitchell Marner tip-in.
“I’m not seeing it as dig a hole all the time. Someone’s going to score first,” Gulutzan said. “We came out hard. We had the better looks. We just didn’t capitalize.”
Speedier, more engaged and blessed with finishing touch, the Leafs tacked on three more, including a dagger on the Flames’ power play, when penalty killer Zach Hyman shot the puck into Brian Elliott’s logo, then tapped in his own rebound five-hole.
The Flames bore themselves holes of 4-0, 5-0 and 4-0 in their past three games. You just don’t crawl out of craters that deep in the NHL. Ironically, the Flames’ defensive motto is, three or less.
“That’s all momentum. The [Leafs] are playing well with a lot of confidence,” Giordano said. “The guys who are expected to produce, especially offensively, we got some good looks tonight and didn’t put the puck in the net.”
One of those expected-to-produce guys is Johnny Gaudreau. Last season he was sixth overall in NHL scoring; this season he’s sixth on his own team. Johnny Hockey hasn’t scored in four games and has just two goals in his past 14.
“He gets more attention paid to him,” GM Brad Treliving explained during a radio interview. “Once we can get [Gaudreau and Sean Monahan] going, it gives us more an offensive threat.”
Babcock did sic his shutdown line on Gaudreau and Monahan, limiting them to two shots on net combined, and Leo Komarov crushed the five-foot-nine winger with a shoulder hard enough to put him in the quiet room. (Gaudreau passed concussion protocol and returned to action.)
“I feel fine. Playing hockey, you’re going to get hit every once in a while,” Gaudreau said. “I just made the pass over. You gotta keep your head on a swivel there. He’s a big guy, so you gotta be smarter there.”
A frustrated Gulutzan watched a couple replays and may look again.
“There was no leaving the feet, I understand that,” the coach said. “I thought it was contact to the head. I thought for sure we’d be going on the power play.”
Komarov’s take: “It kind of looked a little worse than it was. He’s a little bit of a small guy, too. I think it was a good hit.”
An incident like that leads to Dennis Wideman sneak-elbowing Auston Matthews with the game out of reach, and Matthew Tkachuk slewfooting Martin Marincin at the buzzer.
All of it distracts from the real issues here. Calgary’s top line is producing like a second unit, the PIM-happy Flames put themselves in shorthanded situations more frequently than anyone in the league, and they’re failing to get enough big saves.
“We gotta work on keeping it out,” said Elliott, an off-season trade splash from Newmarket, Ont., whose save percentage has sunk to a career-low .891.
Treliving said Elliott is putting too much pressure on himself, but we’re 50 games in and don’t see stress magically disappearing down the stretch, especially with Elliott’s next contract on the line.
“He’s still trying to find that game,” the GM said. “It’s hard to evaluate your team when you’re playing poorly.”
Clinging to wild-card contention as part of a cluster of weaker-than-expected Western clubs, Calgary has now dropped three straight, allowing a combined 15 goals over its slide, and Tuesday they face the Atlantic-leading Montreal Canadiens on the weary end of a back-to-back.
Some silver linings:
1. The Pacific is soft in the middle. Vancouver and Los Angeles have failed to seize on Calgary’s struggles, and all three give up more goals than they score.
2. The Flames’ luck (.991 PDO, among the NHL’s bottom third) is bad and should turn… eventually.
3. Calgary actually out-chanced Toronto. The Flames had a 41-36 lead in five-on-five shot attempts.
“We need to get pucks on the net and at the net. It doesn’t have to be a kill shot every time,” Gultuzan said.
“Hey, if we stay on this path, if we can out-chance teams on a nightly basis, we’re gonna turn this thing.”
Montreal, Tuesday night: A perfect place to start.
