A few minutes later, the Flames scored again. This time they got some zone time in the Vegas zone and cycled the puck pretty well. Yan Kuznetsov\u2019s point shot, going slightly wide of the net, bonked off Adam Klapka (at the edge of the crease) and into the Vegas net. (And then Klapka kinda fell on Schmid.) That made it 2-0 Flames.<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udd25FLAMES GOAL\ud83d\udd25<\/p>\n
Yan Kuznetsov’s point shot finds it’s way to the back of the net! It’s 2-0 Calgary <\/p>\n
\ud83c\udfa5: Sportsnet | #Flames<\/a> <\/p>\n Vegas answered back about a minute and a half later, though. The Flames were caught up ice on an offensive rush chance. Vegas broke up that rush and Mark Stone fed Reilly Smith a head-man pass that got him behind Kevin Bahl and in alone against Devin Cooley. He fired the puck past Cooley to cut the lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n Reilly Smith cuts the Flames lead in half <\/p>\n \ud83c\udfa5: Sportsnet | #Flames<\/a> <\/p>\n But just over five minutes later, the Flames answered back. Vegas had some zone time in the Flames\u2019 end, but John Beecher intercepted and sent Zary and Ryan Lomberg up ice all alone. Zary fed Lomberg for a breakaway and he beat Schmid stick-side to give the Flames a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd25FLAMES GOAL\ud83d\udd25<\/p>\n Ryan Lomberg puts the Flames up 3-1! That’s 2 goals in his last 3 games! <\/p>\n \ud83c\udfa5: Sportsnet | #Flames<\/a> <\/p>\n Right after his goal, Lomberg fought Jeremy Lauzon \u2013 who had a listed six inch and 41 pound size advantage on Lomberg. It was a reasonably competitive tilt, all things considered.<\/p>\n First period shots were 12-6 Flames. Via Natural Stat Trick, 5v5 scoring chances were 13-9 Flames and high-danger scoring chances were 7-5 Flames.<\/p>\n About midway through the second period, the Flames added to their tallies. This time, on a rush sequence, MacKenzie Weegar found Backlund all alone at the far post. Backlund\u2019s initial chance didn\u2019t get past Schmid, but he got his second effort into the net to give the Flames a 4-1 lead.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd25FLAMES GOAL\ud83d\udd25<\/p>\n Mikael Backlund scores his second goal of the game! <\/p>\n \ud83c\udfa5: Sportsnet | #Flames<\/a> <\/p>\n The Flames added a shorthanded tally roughly four minutes later. With Morgan Frost in the sin bin, Joel Farabee collected a pass in his own end from Weegar and went for a skate. He made a really patient play in the Vegas end, waiting out a couple players and then beating Schmid glove-side to put the Flames lead at 5-1.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udd25FLAMES GOAL\ud83d\udd25<\/p>\n Joel Farabee scores a short handed beauty to put Calgary up 5-1!<\/p>\n \ud83c\udfa5: Sportsnet | #Flames<\/a> <\/p>\n Vegas\u2019 Kaedan Korczak responded back a couple minutes later though, taking advantage of a bit of a broken play in the Flames zone \u2013 and a few bodies in front of Cooley \u2013 to pick the top corner of the Calgary net and cut the lead to 5-2.<\/p>\n Vegas scores their second goal of the game. <\/p>\n \ud83c\udfa5: Sportsnet | #Flames<\/a> <\/p>\n Second period shots were 10-9 Flames. 5v5 scoring chances were 9-7 Flames and high-danger scoring chances were 5-2 Flames.<\/p>\n The Golden Knights pressed in the third period and tried to get a little closer. With Kuznetsov in the penalty box, Stone scored a weird and skilled goal: a shot went wide and bounced off the end-boards and into the air near the Flames\u2019 net. Stone whacked it out of mid-air, off Cooley\u2019s back and into the net, to cut the Flames\u2019 lead to 5-3.<\/p>\n Vegas pulled Schmid for the extra attacker with 2:04 remaining in regulation. Cooley was busy but made some good saves and Huberdeau scored on an empty-net \u2013 while being hauled down, so the goal would\u2019ve counted anyway \u2013 to make it a 6-3 Flames win.<\/p>\n Third period shots were 21-5 Flames.<\/p>\n Why the Flames won<\/p>\n Did the Red Team play their usual buttoned-up defensive game? Not entirely. This game got a bit loosey-goosey with the overall structural details at times and became a bit of a scramble. But give the Flames credit: they did a good job at returning to their structure and details and generally avoiding letting the Golden Knights get their mojo going.<\/p>\n Vegas looked a bit off for much of the evening, and the Flames didn\u2019t do much to disrupt whatever was ailing Vegas. What\u2019s the old saying? When you\u2019re opponent\u2019s making mistakes, let them. Well, the Flames were perfectly happy to take advantage of Vegas\u2019 mistakes.<\/p>\n Red Warrior<\/p>\n A lot of players in red looked really strong in this one. We\u2019re gonna give the nod here to Connor Zary, who had\u00a0three assists. But Weegar, Backlund and Zary all multi-point games, too.<\/p>\n Turning point<\/p>\n Lomberg\u2019s goal was, in grand scheme of things, pretty big. Take that away and Vegas is down a goal after 20 minutes and probably feels like they have some hope.<\/p>\n This and that<\/p>\n MacKenzie Weegar\u2019s helper on Mikael Backlund\u2019s second goal was Weegar\u2019s 200th assist of his NHL career. Speaking of Backlund, he now has 224 goals with the Flames, just five shy of Kent Nilsson for fourth in franchise history.<\/p>\n The Flames have scored six shorthanded goals \u2013 tied for the league lead with Anaheim and Los Angeles \u2013 and Joel Farabee and Blake Coleman are in a four-way tie with Joel Armia and Sam Reinhart for the individual league lead with three apiece.<\/p>\n After Burner<\/p>\n Join Mike and Jordan from the In The Dome podcast right after the game for After Burner!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Up next<\/p>\n The Flames (15-17-4) are headed north before Christmas. They\u2019ll face the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place on Tuesday in their final game before the holiday break. We\u2019ll have live on the ground coverage for y\u2019all.<\/p>\n This article is brought to you by Platinum MitsubishiThis article is a Presentation of Platinum Mitsubishi, family owned and operated by lifelong Calgarians. Home of the best warranty in the business with ten year warranties available. Check out the showroom at 2720 Barlow Trail NE or online at www.mitsu.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to Instant Reaction, where we give you our instant reaction to tonight\u2019s Calgary Flames game and ask…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-359465","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\/359465","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=359465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}