After improving to 5-3-0 with a win in New York on Sunday, the Calgary Flames will visit Montreal on Tuesday before hosting Pittsburgh and Washington on Thursday and Saturday.
300 FOR JOHNNY HOCKEY
After scoring his 100th NHL goal in the Flames’ 5-2 victory over the Bruins last Wednesday, Johnny Gaudreau reached another significant milestone on Sunday. With his mom and dad, Jane and Guy, and plenty of family and friends in attendance at Madison Square Garden, Gaudreau scored two goals in his team’s 4-1 triumph over the Rangers, reaching 300 career NHL points.
With 320 games played, Gaudreau’s 0.94 points per game are the most amongst active players selected 100th-or-later in the NHL Draft (the Flames rolled the dice on Gaudreau with the 104th pick in 2011).
At 5-foot-9 and 165 pounds, Gaudreau is one of the smallest players in the league, but he’s also one of the most talented and fun to watch.
Next week, I suspect I’ll be writing about another Gaudreau milestone: 200 career assists.
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FIGHT FOR THE NET
During the off-season, Flames GM Brad Treliving made significant changes to his team, both on and off the ice. The only position that he didn’t touch was goaltending.
While Treliving was confident that Jon Gillies and/or David Rittich would give the Flames good enough No. 2 goaltending that they wouldn’t have to run No. 1 goaltender Mike Smith into the ground, a lot of fans weren’t so sure.
While it’s still really early, Rittich is one of the biggest reasons why the Flames are above .500.
Last season, Rittich was outstanding while serving as Smith’s backup, going 5-1-2 with a 2.20 goals-against average and .927 save percentage in that role.
But when Smith missed a month with a lower-body injury suffered on Feb. 11, Rittich was far less effective in his new role as the starter, going 3-4-1, with a 3.49 GAA and a .888 SV%.
So, when the 26-year-old struggled to find his game in the pre-season, some suggested that the Flames should trade for or claim a more experienced backup for Smith, who has missed significant time due to injury during his NHL career.
But with a perfect 2-0-0 record, and the third-best goals-against average (1.50) and save percentage (.962) in the NHL so far this season, Rittich has been brilliant.
As good as Rittich has been, in my opinion, the Flames are only going to go as far as Smith takes them this season. While the 36-year-old has been a little inconsistent in his first six starts, he has the ability to play at an elite level, as evidenced in his franchise-record-tying 43-save shutout of the Predators on Oct. 9.
While I suspect head coach Bill Peters will give Smith a fairly long leash and the bulk of the starts for the foreseeable future, I also think that managing the 36-year-old’s minutes by starting Rittich every three or four games would be a good idea.
GOING DEEP
One of the many reasons why the Flames failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season was their deficiency of depth at forward, and in turn, their lack of secondary scoring. On most nights, if the top two lines didn’t score multiple goals, the Flames didn’t win games.
This season, all four lines are contributing.
With 14 goals and 28 points, the new No. 1 line of Gaudreau, Sean Monahan and Elias Lindholm is off to a great start offensively.
The second line, currently comprised of Matthew Tkachuk, Mikael Backlund and Michael Frolik, has been excellent defensively. Offensively, they’ve also been very good, scoring seven goals and producing 17 points.
While their goal and point totals (four goals and seven points) aren’t as high as they’d, or the team, would like them to be, the threesome of Sam Bennett, Derek Ryan and James Neal have been outstanding in a couple of contests, including last Friday’s game against the Predators. The Flames’ third line has the potential to create massive matchup problems for opposing head coaches, especially if (when) Neal starts doing what he’s always done, scoring lots of goals.
On Sunday, it was the fourth line’s turn. The threesome of Dillon Dube, Mark Jankowski and Garnet Hathaway was outstanding.
Hathaway was rewarded with his first two goals of the season.
Jankowski played his best game of 2018-19 and recorded an assist.
Dube, who was somehow held pointless, was probably the best of the bunch. With one assist in his first seven NHL games, Dube has been snake-bitten, but the floodgates could open when he finally gets the monkey off of his back and scores his first-career goal.
Outside of the team’s top 12 right now is talented forward Austin Czarnik, who has one goal and two assists in six games. The versatile Czarnik, who has spent time playing on all four lines this season, has been a healthy scratch in the past two games, but will likely draw back into the lineup sooner rather than later.
BLOSSOMING BLUELINERS
In Rasmus Andersson, Noah Hanifin and Juuso Valimaki, the Flames have three of the 23 youngest defencemen in the NHL.
I have to remind myself fairly frequently that Hanifin, who was the first defenceman selected and the fifth player taken in the 2015 NHL Draft, is only 21. It’s hard to believe because he’s already in his fourth full season in the league and has almost 250 games under his belt. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound defenceman is an elite skater. Coming off of a career year offensively, scoring 10 goals and producing 32 points in 79 games for the Hurricanes last season, Hanifin has an extremely high ceiling.
Valimaki, who was drafted 16th overall by the Flames in 2017 and just turned 20 on Oct. 6, has played with so much poise early in the season that he’s looked more like a veteran than a rookie. Much like Hanifin, Valimaki has good size (6-foot-2, 212 pounds) and is an excellent skater. While he will likely have to wait a while, Valimaki has the potential to be a top-pairing defenceman for the Flames in two or three years.
Andersson, whom the Flames selected with the 53rd-overall pick in 2015, and who turns 22 on Saturday, has been turning heads since the start of training camp. After starting the season with the Stockton Heat, the 6-foot-1, 214-pound defenceman was recalled on Oct. 5 after Travis Hamonic was put on injured reserve with facial fractures suffered in a fight with the Canucks’ Erik Gudbranson in the season opener.
Andersson has looked more and more comfortable and confident in every game, and was rewarded with a promotion to the top pairing with Giordano in the second and third periods of the Flames’ 4-1 victory over the Rangers on Sunday.
There’s no doubt Hanifin is here to stay – and I think it’s safe to say so is Valimaki. As for Andersson, he’s making a very strong case to stay, but when Hamonic is ready to return as soon as late next week, Treliving and Peters are probably going to have to make some difficult decisions. Who stays, who goes, who plays? I’m anxious to see how it all plays out.
