{"id":224044,"date":"2025-10-19T07:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T07:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224044\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T07:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T07:08:10","slug":"flames-takeaways-calgary-stuck-in-basement-after-blowout-loss-in-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224044\/","title":{"rendered":"Flames takeaways: Calgary stuck in basement after blowout loss in Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bottom of the league in goals scored and goal differential, the Calgary Flames<\/a> are now the NHL\u2019s last-place team.<\/p>\n

They can\u2019t score, they can\u2019t defend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no sugar-coating where this beleaguered bunch sits a mere half-dozen games into the season, losing five in a row to sit 1-5.<\/p>\n

And the road ahead doesn\u2019t get any easier, facing Winnipeg in two of their next three games.<\/p>\n

A 6-1 beating in Vegas on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday added to the frustration of an already-challenging start, especially since the effort of several players was called into question.<\/p>\n

Coach Ryan Huska, whose players rarely shortchange him on heart, said half his forwards didn\u2019t give the sort of effort expected.<\/p>\n

Captain Mikael Backlund agreed the group didn\u2019t show near enough fight after an evenly played first period saw the Flames down 3-1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe battle has pretty much been there from the boys, but tonight I don\u2019t think it was up to our standards,\u201d said Backlund.<\/p>\n

The harshest criticism came from HNIC\u2019s Kevin Bieksa, who blasted Yegor Sharangovich for failing to finish a check on William Karlsson late in\u00a0the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would absolutely lose my mind if I saw that on the bench,\u201d said Bieksa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a culture thing for me. I would show that clip in practice and say, \u2018where are my guys that care?\u2019 Play the guys that care. If you\u2019re going to get an effort like that, get rid of him. You\u2019re disgracing the NHL with an effort like that. Be a little mad. Hate to lose. That guy doesn\u2019t hate to lose.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have so many good young players \u2026 you have a young nucleus and you can\u2019t have them poisoned by that type of behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

More takeaways from (another) nightmare in Vegas:<\/p>\n

After missing the first five games of the season due to a pre-season injury, Jonathan Huberdeau returned to the lineup and made an immediate impact with a power-play goal three minutes in. Banging in a rebound on the power-play to tie the game 1-1, it kickstarted an evening in which the team\u2019s best playmaker did well to inject some energy into the top line with Nazem Kadri and Joel Farabee.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need your best players to be your best players every night and I thought the Kadri, Huberdeau, Farabee line was excellent for us tonight, consistently,\u201d said Huska.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had the puck a lot and were dangerous. The challenge becomes, it\u2019s everybody. You can\u2019t rely on the one group of guys. I don\u2019t think we had enough other players that were as engaged as that line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huberdeau said his club isn\u2019t playing as a unit, trying too hard to do things individually.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now it\u2019s just too easy against us,\u201d said Huberdeau, whose club allowed Mark Stone and Jack Eichel to pile up four points apiece.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re leaving the best player on the other team wide open. We\u2019ve got to be harder on these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go ahead and try to blame Dustin Wolf on any of the five goals he was beaten on, but you\u2019d be wrong to do so.<\/p>\n

Still, after being beaten five times on 19 shots, Wolf gave way to Devin Cooley for the third period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a salient move given the rigorous schedule ahead this week, with Winnipeg in town Monday, Montreal visiting Wednesday and a return trip to Winnipeg on Friday.<\/p>\n

Cooley was spectacular in his season debut Wednesday in Utah, and was solid again Saturday, victimized only once by a Vegas power play that finished three-for-three on the night. He stopped eight of nine shots.<\/p>\n

Having taken note of a high hit<\/a> Colton Sissons made on Zayne Parekh when these two teams met four nights earlier, Ryan Lomberg took the opportunity to let the Vegas forward know it didn\u2019t sit well with the Flames.<\/p>\n

Two minutes in, to the surprise of no one, the two decided to settle the score.<\/p>\n

Six minutes later, the Golden Knights took exception to a heavy Adam Klapka hit on Zach Whitecloud when Jeremy Lauzon dropped the gloves with the big Flames winger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe (Connor) Zary line, with Lomberg and Klapka, I thought gave us a great effort tonight \u2013 two good fights from the two guys on that line but we didn\u2019t have much from the other two lines tonight,\u201d said Huska.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a stretch right now where we\u2019re not playing poorly \u2013 I thought tonight\u2019s game got away from us for sure \u2013 but it\u2019s the consistency our team has to play with for a full 60 minutes. We need to be more committed and more detailed for a full 60 minutes for more than we\u2019ve shown this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was good news on the farm, where rookie Matvei Gridin scored his first AHL goal in his first AHL game just 37 seconds into the contest Saturday in Tucson, Ariz.\u00a0Hunter Brzustewicz also scored his first of the season, although\u00a0the Wranglers fell 5-4 in OT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bottom of the league in goals scored and goal differential, the Calgary Flames are now the NHL\u2019s last-place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-224044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}