TAMPA — It’s quite possible Wednesday’s turkey in Tampa might be one of the worst starts to a Calgary Flames game in decades.
Consider the evidence:
A game-opening chance by Jonathan Huberdeau was immediately turned up ice for a Brandon Hagel goal 39 seconds in.
The second shot of the game also beat Dustin Wolf cleanly, staking the hosts to a 2-0 lead a mere 1:26 in.
Five minutes in, it was 3-0 when the fourth shot on net saw Kevin Bahl tip a centring pass out of the air and past his own netminder.
Split seconds after backup Devin Cooley pieced together his gear and skated out to relieve Wolf of his duties, Elliotte Friedman put out a tweet reiterating what was written in this space days earlier, reporting a contract extension for Craig Conroy was close to being done.
As popular as the third-year Flames GM is in town, it certainly wasn’t the moment for frustrated Flames fans to stomach news of any sort.
A fourth goal for the hosts came at the halfway mark of the first.
In the midst of an 0-for-5 stretch for Calgary’s power play, two Lightning blasts ricocheted off the Flames' crossbar in the second, followed by a fifth goal that was mercifully waived off for goalie interference.
Then came a slightly more comical slice of disrespect, courtesy of the Lightning’s public address announcer, who announced a late Flames slashing penalty to, “No. 20, Blake Thompson.”
Um, not to split hairs, but that would be Blake Coleman, who won two Stanley Cups as a once-beloved member of the Bolts.
“I asked the guy in the box if I had heard that right and they were laughing,” said Coleman, able to find a sliver of humour in the mix-up.
“I could hear people laughing beside me on the glass.”
“He got the time of the penalty wrong too,” added Coleman, who took part in Stanley Cup boat parades in 2020 and 2021.
An affable chap, always willing to dole out the benefit of the doubt, Coleman offered up a possibility:
“Maybe they got a new PA announcer.”
Nope. Same guy.
Indeed, a 5-1 loss at Benchmark International Arena marked one of those nights where everything that could go wrong did, especially in the opening five minutes.
It was a jarring start for a Flames team that flew south starting to feel good about itself with three wins in a row.
And while there’s nothing like a visit to Florida these days to humble even the hottest of teams, what made the loss worse was that the injury-depleted Lightning scorers only included two of the usual suspects in Hagel and Nikita Kucherov.
Other lamplighters included Declan Carlile, Charle-Edouard D’Astous and Zemgus Girgensons.
“We knew they were a good first-period team, especially in this building, and they put us right on our heels,” said captain Mikael Backlund.
“Of course, Huby has a great chance to score and (it would be) 1-0 and it could be a different game, but they score five seconds later and we didn’t help ourselves.”
Things settled down by night’s end, as the Flames picked up their bootstraps and forced Andrei Vasilevskiy to make 32 saves, while Cooley made 17.
Joel Farabee was the lone goal scorer, scoring shorthanded early in the third for his fourth goal in as many games.
On to play the Panthers next, in a Friday afternoon game the Flames will be heavy underdogs in once again.
Stay tuned on the Conroy front, as the organization has been looking for the right time to shoehorn the news into a nightmarish start that has the 8-14-3 Flames sitting 31st in the league.
Conroy wasn’t at the game, but was in Lethbridge, watching the finale of the CHL-USA Prospects Challenge in preparation for what will be a busy draft.
Yes, as we’ve said here all week, he’s the right man to continue adding to the rebuild that’s already afoot, armed with patience and a likeability needed to steer the club through some rough waters ahead.
But on this night, it was hard for anyone to see past the mess this team is right now.
