I called Wednesday night's NHL slate "Momentum Wednesday." Look, I'm sure one of you wise guys could have come up with a better name. But I was too focused on the action. There were three questions that hung over the trio of games on tap: "Can the Devils keep winning?", "Can the Red Wings keep winning?", and "Can the Flames stop losing?" The answers, in order, were "Yeah, they looked great," "Nah, they got outplayed by the Sabres," and "No."
As I mentioned in the preview, Calgary is in a tough spot. At the start of Momentum Wednesday's game against the Canadiens, the lights at the Saddledome were halfway out when they decided to drop the puck anyway, and that's a fine metaphor for how the Flames are doing. Several years ago, they had a wonderline that they couldn't keep together, and even though they haven't sunk to "truly embarrassing" in the past three years, they haven't reached the playoffs, either. Last season, they overachieved significantly—though still just missed out on the wild card—thanks not to their gasless forwards but to their goalie Dustin Wolf, who despite being an undersized rookie took on a huge workload and proved to be solid bedrock. For a franchise very much in transition, one that's bringing along its younger skaters fairly slowly, Calgary was undeniably going to be Wolf's team going forward. A new contract that'll run through 2033 formalized it.
As cool as the "Wolf Flames" sounds in theory, it's looked like Chihuahua Ashes to start the season. An inspiring shootout win in the opener over Edmonton gave way to six straight regulation losses. Wolf currently leads the NHL in goals allowed, which is not good, but also even a SuperWolf wouldn't have been able to steal many games, because in four of the six, Calgary has only scored one goal. In the other two games, they scored two.
There's never a good time to go on a losing skid, but this early in the season feels especially depressing. You look at the standings and see "2" as your point total while other teams are hitting double digits. You have no real hard evidence yet that you posses the ability to win games. You must take it on faith that something different will happen, eventually. But every loss compounds the weight, so, after a tough third period that allowed Winnipeg to beat them 2-1 on Monday, Calgary had to bear down and bring the best performance they could against the Canadiens.
The good news: Wolf looked more like a guy you'd trust to carry your team. While the Flames took more shots than the Habs, it was Wolf who had to make the more difficult and athletic stops. He was perfect in five-on-five play, and watching him in this contest specifically, it was easy to fall in love with the kind of scrappy sense of responsibility that he brings as the clean-up man in the crease. For better or often for worse, nobody stands out more on the Flames.
Wolf's performance was enough to earn the Flames a rare point, but the skaters brought nothing to the overtime period, while Montreal executed to perfection. They simply held possession for a full minute until Ivan Demidov was able to make the defense lopsided and execute a pass over to Mike Matheson for a one-timer winner.
That I know the Flames aren't going to keep losing games at this bad a rate makes me want to search for silver linings. Jonathan Huberdeau, who missed the first five outings, forms a line with Nazem Kadri and Joel Farabee that has a lot of talent, even though it's lacking a finisher who really makes a defense freak out. Connor Zary, the 24-year-old former first-rounder, is someone that the team needs to grow into a key role, but he's been practically invisible to start the year. Morgan Frost, brought over from Philly alongside Farabee in the middle of last season, is a guy who I think could break out in the right situation, but I'm not sure this is the one. The defense hasn't been good enough, and there's a lot of pressure on the 19-year-old Zayne Parekh to become a pillar of a group that otherwise doesn't feel too capable of protecting Wolf from stressful nights.
I can imagine a version of the Flames whose M.O. is getting by in low-scoring affairs by playing basic, solid hockey. But not this low-scoring. As it stands, these guys are skating in quicksand, and every game they lose 2-1 or 3-1 or 4-2 is going to sting more and more until it's time to give up on the season. We're not there yet—there is still so, so much time to turn it around. But all a good goalie means for them right now is that would-be blowouts turn into mere losses.
