Still unable to win in SoCal for the longest time are the Calgary Flames, who fell to the Anaheim Ducks in Game 1 of their first round series on Thursday, 3-2.
The Flames squandered a fantastic outing from goalie Brian Elliott, who made 38 saves in the loss. Elliott now has a dismal lifetime record of 1-7-3 and a 3.20 goals-against average against the Ducks, which means his teammates have got to counter with better offense to help his cause.
Calgary was outshot 41-32 in Game 1, with left wing Micheal Ferland having team-highs of seven shots-on-goal and three hits. At least Sean Monahan and Sam Bennett each found the back of the net, while Johnny Gaudreau also had a great chance to time the game late with his blocked shot attempt with less than 20 seconds left in the game.
What the Flames need to do is stay resilient and prevent mistakes from constantly happening. They allowed two power-play goals to the Ducks and those two scores ended up being their demise. The team ranked 12th in the league during the regular season in penalty kill, so hopefully Thursday’s lackluster performance on special teams wouldn’t rear its ugly head again.
This could finally be the year that the Anaheim Ducks no longer underwhelm their fans with yet another division-winning campaign only to suffer a brutal exit from the playoffs.
Just about every one of the team’s key players came up huge in securing the Game 1 win over the Flames on Thursday. Jakob Silfverberg scored the go-ahead goal in the second period, while Rickard Rakell’s game-tying score further extended his point streak to three games.
Best of all, team captain Ryan Getzlaf provided the fireworks with a goal, an assist and a hard check on Calgary’s Mark Giordano, who dished out a massive blow to top defenseman Cam Fowler just last week. Fowler’s status for Game 2 is still up in the air, but Getzlaf sort of avenged his teammate in a nice way by taking down Giordano and by now having a whopping 29 points in his last 19 starts.
Let’s not forget that goalie John Gibson also had 30 saves to round out a fantastic performance, and that Anaheim also exposed the shaky Flames in faceoff situations, 49-29.
With all matters from Game 1 taken into consideration, the Ducks are very much heading into this weekend in fine shape to deny their visiting division rivals a victory once more – winning in Anaheim is something that the Flames have not been able to accomplish since April of 2006.
Writer’s Prediction
The Ducks (-160) extinguish the Flames at the Honda Center for the 29th-consecutive time, 4-2.
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