Reunited and it feels so good.
The story of the day Monday was the Flames making a splash in adding Tyler Toffoli via trade from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Tyler Pitlick, prospect Emil Heineman and a pair of draft picks.
Toffoli is no stranger to many in the Flames locker-room, having played with Trevor Lewis, Milan Lucic and Brad Richardson in Los Angeles, Jacob Markstrom and Chris Tanev in a short stint with Vancouver, while also playing junior hockey with Sean Monahan during their days with the Ottawa 67's.
And, of course, coached by current Flames bench boss Darryl Sutter in winning two rings with the Kings.
"It's good. I think everybody's fired up," Markstrom said. "Everybody knows what kind of a player he is and he's a goal-scorer everywhere he goes and I'm happy because he usually scores on me and has been doing it his whole career. I'm happy I got him in Vancouver. He left to Montreal and last year he scored some goals, and this year he scored, too. I'm happy he's wearing the C now.
"In the room, too, he's a great guy. A little quiet, but a good guy and he wants to win and he's excited to come here. (He's) obviously familiar with Looch and Tanny and myself and a few other guys, so I feel he's going to fit right in."
With 182 career goals to his name, Toffoli brings a lot to the Flames lineup, not only with his goal-scoring, but dedication to playing a complete game.
"It's one of those things where there was a lot of pressure on me to score goals, but first and foremost for me to get into the league, to play under Darryl and play the 200-foot style of hockey. That's what I take pride it," Toffoli said. "I know that sounds kind of cliche, but that's kind of like my style and when I get the puck on my stick, I like to shoot it. Hopefully I can have that success and fit in right away and help the team continue to win games."
There's no word yet on if the 29-year-old will play tonight. But when he does, he'll look make an immediate impact and help the red-hot Flames continue collect W's.
The Flames enter tonight's game against the Jackets riding a six-game winning streak, which ties their longest of the season.
The last time the clubs met was back on Jan. 28 when the Flames set a franchise record with 63 shots on goal in a dominating 6-0 victory. Since then, the Flames have had an impressive run of 6-1 with an undefeated run in February thus far.
Pretty good, hey?
"There's a lot of confidence and trust from management to make the next step for the team to move in the right direction," Lucic said. "We're in a good spot right now because of how we've played in the first 45 games - and what's nice, too, is that we didn't make this trade with 15-20 games left. We've made this trade with 37 games, so there's a lot of season to be played and we've got a lot of games coming up in not a lot of days coming up, so it's... Everyone's smiling, everyone's happy about it, and now it's just about keeping it going in the right direction."
