Flames face daunting task of ending losing skid before it derails momentum

Brendan Gallagher and Nick Suzuki combined for four points as the Montreal Canadiens downed the Calgary Flames 4-2.

MONTREAL – On the heels of a ten-game point streak, the Calgary Flames have started a new run.

They’ve now lost two games in a row against depleted teams they should have beaten.

Surrendering a pair of power play goals in the second half of an entertaining, 4-2 loss to the Canadiens at Bell Centre Thursday, the Flames now face the daunting task of trying to stop their slide in Toronto Friday against a surging Leafs club.

And just like that, the Flames are staring at the type of skid that has derailed Flames clubs of the past.

This is where we start to see whether Darryl Sutter’s system, preparation and mindset can help turn the tables on an age-old trend in Calgary where the Flames have long been prone to turning solid runs into bad ones.

“Good teams don’t lose three in a row, so we’ve got to bounce back tomorrow,” said Mikael Backlund, who opened the scoring with a deflection past Jake Allen two minutes into the evening.

“We’ve got to regroup and refocus, we’re not happy we’re losing. We have to come out with a lot of energy like I know we will. Hometown game for a lot of guys. They’ve got a good power play, so we have to stay out of the box. It’s a big game for us, setting up this road trip. It’s a long trip and it’s going to feel a lot better 1-1 than 0-2.”

The Flames certainly played well enough to squeak out at least a point, before 1-0 and 2-1 leads were erased by a desperate Habs club that tied it midway through the second by banging in a puck lying on the goal line after rebounding off the post and then Jacob Markstrom’s back.

The Flames found themselves trying to kill off the last three of their five shorthanded situations in the third period before a Nick Suzuki bank shot off Jacobson’s pad was the difference-maker.

“Marky was probably reading the play to go all the way around the net,” said Sutter, whose happiness with the team’s play was countered by his obvious displeasure on the bench with officials.

“I thought we had a really solid first period. I think it was a little disjointed in the second with the way the officiating was, and I thought we had a really good start to the third. My only take on (the officiating) is their team leads the league in minor penalties. I thought it would be a little more (even).”

The Flames enjoyed just one power play.

Given how tight a game it was, no one in Calgary should be worried about the start or the effort.

As Sutter reiterated after the game, he doesn’t feel his club is capable of sustaining the goal-scoring pace it set to open the season 7-1-3.

So, in an effort to kickstart a few of his forwards, he promoted Sean Monahan and Andrew Mangiapane to the second line, alongside Blake Coleman.

It paid dividends early when the three combined on a stunner that saw a 40-foot cross-ice pass from Monahan corralled by the right skate of Mangiapane, who kicked it to his stick before roofing a backhand over Allen, in tight, with a defender draped all over him.

It was a magic marker that served as yet another reminder of why he’s on the Canadian Olympic team’s long list.

His ninth of the year is the league’s-leading eighth road marker.

“I was just trying to shake some guys up that have struggled lately,” said Sutter of the line changes.

“We try to set goals for these guys to achieve, short-term, in three or four games or five games at a time. Some guys have fallen off in that. Sometimes it gets a little stale for them or something like that. Wanted to get Sean going a little bit, so moved some guys around and tried to see if we could get a little more offence out of it. That’s what I said a while ago, when we were scoring three and a half goals a game, it’s not a sustainable number. It’s just flat-out not, the league doesn’t work like that. What are we, 12 games in now? We need a little more offence.”

They needed one more save too, something the red-hot Markstrom lamented afterwards.

“Not good enough - I think that’s a pretty simple way to assess it,” said Markstrom, unduly hard on himself after a 25-save effort in which only the Suzuki goal was questionable.

“You want to keep it two or under and they got some bounces to get their first and second one. But you need to come up with a couple saves to keep it tight and give the guys a chance to win. We’ve got a new game tomorrow so you can’t really dwell on it, but tonight is going to suck.”

Sutter said he hadn’t thought about who he’d start in Toronto Friday, but smart money says Dan Vladar gets the tap.

It’s the Flames first road loss in six road outings, but it’s the first game of a seven-game roadie they hoped to start off with some momentum.

“This is a long road trip and we wanted to start with a win,” said Markstrom.

“No one was happy with the game against San Jose the other night. I thought we had this game where we wanted to, but we couldn’t finish it and they got three goals.”

Sutter refused to buy into the narrative his team should have beaten a Covid-ravaged Sharks team with 11 players of under 50 games of NHL experience, and a Montreal club missing Jonathan Drouin, Joel Edmundson, Shea Weber and Carey Price.

“We're a team that didn't make the playoffs last year, we're trying to stay in the race,” said the coach.

“There's not enough difference in the league, I'll tell you that, right now. Every night, it's a tough game. As I said before, we're a team that's not going to score a lot, so we are going to do a lot of grinding and banging away. I think we did more of that tonight than we probably did in the last couple games."

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