Flames Game Recaps

Flames Visual Recap 30: Oilers blow out the Flames in Sutter’s first loss

The Calgary Flames faced off against the Edmonton Oilers for the sixth round of this season’s Battle of Alberta. For the home team, they were looking at extending their win streak to four to maintain Sutter’s perfect start. Unfortunately, that did not happen as the Oilers wreaked havoc against the Flames, scoring seven goals to Calgary’s three.

Edmonton got to work early in the game and were able to score two goals within the game’s first eight minutes. The first came from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the second from Jesse Puljujarvi on the power play. While the Oilers got two quick goals past Jacob Markstrom, the Flames had their chances on the other end of the ice too. However, Mike Smith was up to the task and prevented Calgary from cutting into the lead.

When the second period came around, the Flames controlled play for large portions of it, seeing extended time in the offensive zone. There was a stretch in the period where the Flames had excellent pressure, and the play ended with an exhausted group of Oilers being forced to stay on the ice due to icing. As luck would have it, the TV timeout rolled around at the exact same time to the benefit of Edmonton.

After play resumed, the Oilers were able to change and instead quickly extended their lead as Dominik Kahun converted on an unbelievable pass from Leon Draisaitl for the Oiler’s third of the game. Less than 30 seconds later the Flames were finally able to answer, as Elias Lindholm was wide open for a perfect feed from Matthew Tkachuk. Momentum shifted between the two teams, but the second period would end with the Oilers maintaining their two goal lead.

The Flames had a multi-goal deficit to overcome heading into the third, but the Oilers rapidly made it worse. Much worse. Edmonton potted four more goals, two on the power play from Connor McDavid and Alex Chiasson, followed by two at even-strength from Darnell Nurse and Zack Kassian. All of this happened before the third period even reached its midpoint.

At this point, the Flames were playing to be a little less embarrassed, and they were able to answer with two goals. Mikael Backlund and Johnny Gaudreau scored—the latter on the power play—to make the blow out sting a little less.

The game visualisations are below. Warning, the following contains graphic content:

Game events

All situations corsi

Check out our tutorial on how to plot an NHL rink using R with the full code and customisation options included!

5v5 corsi

Shifts

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