Minutes after the Calgary Flames’ 10-game point streak came to an end on Tuesday, Milan Lucic was asked what the key would be for his team to reset.
“Just start a new one,” he grinned, adding one of the only morsels of entertainment to the club’s last Dome appearance before a seven-game roadie -- a 4-1 loss to the San Jose Sharks.
“We have to do what we did on the first game of the last trip -- you can’t look at the road trip as a whole -- you want to start the road trip off on the right note. The most important thing right now is to regroup and reset and have a good start and be ready to play and have a good first period in Montreal and get rolling from there.
“We’ve built a foundation, we’ve built an identity and something we can go back to and rely on, and that’s going to give us success and it’s something we need to do on puck drop Thursday night.”
Three nights after hosting one of the most memorable and complete efforts in recent franchise lore, Lucic’s Flames fell short against a Sharks team with more no-names than Superstore.
The combination of a rebuild decimated by COVID-19 resulted in 11 San Jose players with fewer than 50 games of experience in the lineup against one of the league’s hottest clubs.
Yet, after exchanging goals 30 second apart to open the second period, there were the Flames entering the third period with no apparent answers for Calgary Buffaloes product Adin Hill. The goaltender also added two assists.
A second period with 19 shots and 10 high danger scoring chances still left the Flames tied going into a third period in which they vowed to trust the process that led them to tie several previous games in the third.
Not this time.
“I thought we had the better of them in the second and I thought we could continue that,” said coach Darryl Sutter, who spent the morning warning his squad of the perils of taking the Sharks young lineup lightly.
“I’m not so sure it was a hot goalie -- it was a close game. That’s how San Jose plays. They give you zero on the rush and they don’t take penalties. You have to score the way we scored.”
The Flames' goal came off a review that found an Andrew Mangiapane jam-job in the crease had, in fact, crossed the line.
It wasn’t pretty, but on this night absolutely nothing was.
It was the polar opposite of Saturday night’s love-in with the fans that saw the hosts win 6-0 over the New York Rangers.
Four minutes into the third Nikita Zadorov started a shift with a hellacious open-ice hit on Alexander Barabanov that gave the fans something to cheer about.
However, his shift ended with a deflection of a Logan Couture wrister off his stick that beat Jacob Markstrom and stood as the winner in a 4-1 loss that featured two empty netters.
The Flames insisted afterwards they didn’t fall victim to the typical trap game that came with playing an AHL roster on the last date before a seven-game trip.
But they will still seek redemption at Bell Centre on Thursday against a Montreal Canadiens team that denied Calgary the final playoff spot last season.
“We talked about it and we knew it was going to be a similar game to Pittsburgh where they’d have a lot of energy, and a lot of speed, and a good forecheck,” said Mikael Backlund.
“I thought in the second we played faster and better and our power play too created some momentum. They did a good job playing with the lead. Credit to those guys because they had a lot of young guys, but they worked hard and we knew going in it was going to be a hard game because of the way they play.”
Calgary finished the five-game homestand with a 2-1-2 record, setting the stage for an interesting eastern excursion where the Flames will see if they can continue building on their last road swing, which saw the 7-2-3 team go a perfect 5-0.
