Last night, the St. Louis Blues (reluctantly – we’ll talk about it in a second) made their way into the Saddledome, winners of five straight, looking to take a 6th off of the Flames at home. Spoiler Alert: For those of you short on time, that is not what happened at all and yours truly was boots on the ground in the Saddledome to take in all the sights and sounds with my mom, cause I’m a friggin’ gentleman.
St. Louis blue liner Justin Faulk made his feelings towards a Canadian road trip well known a few days prior, indicating he was not excited to come to Canada, and was looking forward to leaving after a few games, and I’m sure he’s feeling today like that can’t come soon enough.
The Blues did open up the scoring, with Tyler Bozak solving Markstrom about 5 minutes into the first frame but this is where the Blues scoring would begin and end. Shortly afterwards, the Flames would knot it up at 1-1 and never look back. Nikita Zadorov kicked off the party with his third of the year on a simple, crisp shot through traffic to solve Binnington high-glove.
Calgary, after allowing the opening goal on the third shot of the night from St. Louis, then hemmed it in defensively and held St. Louis to only 2 more shots in the first period, while firing off 17 of their own. The Flames played a complete, 200-foot game from the moment of the Bozak goal until the final horn sounded.
Obviously it was very apparent who the Flames, once again, relied on for their primary scoring, with Johnny Hockey and Matt Tkachuk combining for 9 points, (Gaudreau: 1G, 3A – Tkachuk: 0G, 5A), but it was the complete effort from the entire roster top to bottom, getting scoring from Zadorov, Tanev, Ruzicka, Lindholm, Monahan, etc. that really made the difference on the offensive end.
However beyond absolutely abusing Jordan Binnington, who looked absolutely shellshocked turning away just shy of 30 shots in the effort, the Flames provided Markstrom with world class help keeping the puck in front of them. Holding St. Louis to only 9 shots through two periods (the Flames had 35), Calgary controlled the pace of play, the flow of the game, and ultimately took the chance to dogwalk the Blues out of the Dome, and giving the Flames media team a flawless layup to troll Faulk for his earlier comments.
Enjoy the flight home Faulky, we’ll come visit on Thursday. The Flames are back in action in Flavortown, Ohio (Columbus) Wednesday night before heading to St. Louis for Round 2.
The Morning Skate 