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TAMPA BAY — It’s entirely possible Wednesday’s rout in Tampa could be one of the worst starts to a Calgary Flames game in decades.
A chance to open the game by Jonathan Huberdeau immediately turned into a Brendan Hagel goal 39 seconds into the ice.
The second shot of the game also beat Dustin Wolf cleanly, giving the hosts a 2-0 lead just 1:26 in.
Five minutes in, it was 3-0 when the fourth shot on net saw Kevin Bahl take a centering pass out of the air and past his own netminder.
Split seconds after backup Devin Cooley gathered his gear and skated in to relieve Wolf of his duties, Elliott Friedman tweeted a reiteration of what he had written in Space Day, close to reporting a contract extension for Craig Connery.
As the illustrious third year of the Flames’ GM is in town, this was certainly not the moment for disillusioned Flames fans to dig up any kind of news.
The fourth goal for the hosts came halfway through the first.
Amid 0-for-5 on Calgary’s power play, two Lightning blasts off the Flames’ crossbar in the second, followed by a fifth goal that was mercifully waived for goal interference.
Then came a slightly more hilarious piece of insult, courtesy of the Lightning’s public address announcer, who announced the late Flames penalty, “Number 20, Blake Thompson.”
Um, not to split the balls, but that would be Blake Coleman, who won two Stanley Cups as a beloved member of the Bolts.
“I asked the guy in the box if I heard that right and he laughed,” said Coleman, able to find a sliver of humor in the mix-up.
“I can hear people laughing over the glass.”
“He also got the timing of the penalty wrong,” added Coleman, who will participate in the Stanley Cup boat parade in 2020 and 2021.
An amiable chap, always ready to give the benefit of the doubt, Coleman offered one possibility:
“Maybe they got a new PA announcer.”
Indeed, a 5-1 loss at the Benchmark International Arena marked one of those nights where everything could have gone wrong, especially in the opening five minutes.
It’s been a shaky start for a Flames team that’s starting to feel good about itself with three wins in a row.
And while there’s nothing like a visit to Florida these days to humble even the hottest of teams, what made the loss worse was that the injury-depleted Lightning scorers included only two usual suspects in Hagel and Nikita Kucherov.
Other luminaries included Declan Carlyle, Charles-Edward D’Austos, and Zemigus Gergensen.
“We knew they were a good first-round team, especially in this building, and they kept us right on our heels,” captain Mikael Backland said.
“Of course, Hobi has a great chance to score and (it would be) 1-0 and it could have been a different game, but they scored five seconds later and we didn’t help ourselves.”
Things settled down at the end of the night, as the Flames pulled up their bootstraps and forced Andrey Vasilevskiy to make 32 saves, while Cooley scored 17.
Joel Faraby was the lone goal scorer, shorthanded early in the third for his fourth goal in as many games.
Playing the Panthers next, the Flames will once again be heavy underdogs in Friday afternoon’s game.
Keep an eye on Conroy on the front, as the organization searches for the right time to add news to a terrible start that has the 8-14-3 Flames sitting 31ST in the league.
Conroy was not at the game, but was in Lethbridge, watching the finals of the CHL-USA Prospects Challenge in what will be a busy draft.
Yes, as we’ve said here all week, he’s the right guy to continue adding to the rebuild that’s already underway, armed with the patience and perseverance needed to move the club forward through some rough waters.
But on this night, it was hard to see past who this team is now.
