5 THINGS - FLAMES VS. SHARKS
The Flames open a six-game homestand tonight vs. San Jose
Video: Brendan Parker tees up the game
NEED-TO-KNOW
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GAME DAY VIDEO
Game Day with Brendan Parker
Pregame Interviews
GAME DAY FEATURES
Hockey is For Everyone Night
Carpen-'Tre' Skills
Projected Lineup
Say What - 'It's Something I Needed'
TRADE DEADLINE
'We Like Our Team' - Treliving
'Just So Many Rumours'
Treliving on Trade Deadline
STAT PACK
Media Game Notes
Scoring Leaders
Head-to-Head Stats
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Leading Scorers:
Flames:
Points - Johnny Gaudreau (80)
Goals - Elias Lindholm (31)
Sharks:
Points - Timo Meier (59)
Goals - Timo Meier (26)
Special Teams:
Flames:
PP - 23.6% (11th) / PK - 85.3% (4th)
Sharks:
PP - 19.1% (21st) / PK - 85.9% (3rd)
Advanced Stats:
Flames:
Shot Attempts: 55.49% (2nd)
High-Danger Chances: 56.54% (1st)
Sharks:
Shot Attempts: 45.15% (31st)
High-Danger Chances: 50.68% (16th)
For a few minutes, anyway, Ryan Carpenter felt completely at ease.
The 1 p.m. deadline officially passed, and with 45 minutes to catch a flight with the Blackhawks, his life in Chicago resumed, as normal.
And then?
It didn't.
"I thought there was a chance I'd get traded," Carpenter said over the phone Monday. "We had ESPN up, so I was watching it and checking Twitter a bit. I actually saw my name rumored to go somewhere else, and then the guy took the tweet down and said it was a mistake. Then, the deadline hit and nothing really happened, so I started rushing to pack.
"Then, I got a couple of texts."
Game on.
In what's become an annual tradition with this made-for-TV holiday, the Flames and Blackhawks had actually swung a trade, but with a logjam of last-minute deals cramming the phone lines at Central Registry, it took some time for the paperwork to get through.
In any case, Carpenter is a Flame, now - and despite the flurry of emotions that washed over him in the moment, the 31-year-old couldn't be happier.
He's coming from a team well out of the race, to one in control of the division and with a legitimate shot of summoning Lord Stanley.
While the bulk of Monday's action took place in a boardroom, the on-ice product hasn't been too shabby.
The Flames will open a six-game homestand tonight after toying with the Vancouver Canucks, 5-2, on Saturday at Rogers Arena.
Matthew Tkachuk led the way with a goal and two helpers, while Dan Vladar stopped 23 shots in a game the Flames controlled from start to finish.
But the big story? Head Coach Darryl Sutter unveiled new line combinations that - for one thing - split up the top unit of Elias Lindholm, Johnny Gaudreau and Tkachuk for the first time all season.
The result was a one-sided effort, with five different goal-scorers contributing to the victory.
While the change is unlikely to be permanent, Sutter was looking for a spark after getting shut out two of their previous three outings.
It worked.
The Flames outshot their Pacific rivals 46-32 and had one of their strongest nights of the season in almost every offensive metric, including a 16-6 edge in high-danger scoring chances.
Video: "We like our team"
The Sharks are coming off a 4-2 win over the Arizona Coyotes on Sunday, snapping a three-game slide.
Noah Gregor scored the winning goal with 3:45 to play in the third, after Timo Meier tied the game 44 seconds earlier.
Nick Bonino and Rudolfs Balcers also tickled the twine, while James Reimer made 23 saves in the victory.
"He was excellent all night, probably our best player," Sharks forward Logan Couture told Chelena Goldman of NHL.com. "All over the puck, creating chances. He's had a lot of games like that this year where he's been on pucks and moving his feet, and he's easy to play with, but pucks just haven't gone in."
The last time San Jose won a game in regulation when trailing in the final five minutes was way back on Dec. 2, 2006, a 3-2 victory at the Detroit Red Wings.
Gregor - a Beaumont, Alta., native - added an assist, and now has four goals and 13 points in 43 games this season.
The win moved the Sharks to 27-27-8 on the year, but the playoffs look to be a longshot. They're 10 points back of the Vegas Golden Knights for the second and final wild-card berth.
This is the first of a short, two-game trip for the Fins, who will visit the Oilers on Thursday.
"We came out hard the first five minutes, and then I thought that we started trying to be a little too fancy, not shooting enough pucks," Sharks Head Coach and Former Flames D-man Bob Boughner said. "They play the exact same system in the neutral zone as us, and we talked about that before the game. We were a little hardheaded, we refused to chip down pucks, we tried to skate through their wall just as we want teams to do to us, and it just caused too many turnovers."
The Sharks made a couple of moves on deadline day, acquiring goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen from the Wild for defenceman Jacob Middleton and a draft pick, and defenceman Anthony Bitetto from the Rangers for Nick Merkley.
In 25 appearances this season, Kahkonen is 12-8-3, along with a .910 save percentage and a 2.87 goals-against average.
The Flames are on the brink of featuring four 30-goal scorers, with Johnny Gaudreau (28) and Matthew Tkachuk (29) close to joining Elias Lindholm (31) and Andrew Mangiapane (30). This would be the first time since 1993-94 the Flames would have four 30-goal scorers in one season (1993-94: Gary Roberts - 41, Theo Fleury - 40, Robert Reichel - 40, and Joe Nieuwendyk - 36). ... The Flames have scored 73 first-period goals this season. The only teams in the NHL with more opening-frame goals this season are the Florida Panthers (83) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (75).
Flames - Calle Jarnkrok
Jarnkrok tallied his first point as a Flame in Saturday's win over the Canucks - an assist on Noah Hanifin's opening strike. He could have easily had another, if not for the heroics of Thatcher Demko, who robbed Rasmus Andersson in tight after he and Jarnkrok engineered a 2-on-0 below the hash marks.
Also, in case you missed it:
Tweet from @AAVickers: We knew Jarnkok could play all three forward positions...I didn't hear any talk of him shooting both left and right... #Flames pic.twitter.com/ob3yfmiEj7
For a player that prides himself on playing all three forward positions and can take faceoffs on his off-hand as well, the Flames have got themselves a good one here.
Sharks - Tomas Hertl
For the first three-quarters of the season, Hertl's name was synonymous with trade talk.
No longer.
The 28-year-old signed an eight-year $65.1M extension with the club late last week and will be a foundational piece for the Sharks through the 2029-30 season.
Hertl has 49 points (25G, 24A) in 62 games this year.
Blake Coleman on not losing two games in a row for more than two months:
"It's big. You never want to let things slide too far. We talk about it in the room. Obviously, the staff takes it one game at a time and Darryl's approach is very day-by-day - tries not to dwell on past games too much. We're more focused on the teams we're playing (next). But I think that ability to turn the page and turn your focus has allowed us to be a good group - and we're a proud group. Nobody in the room was happy with our performance against Buffalo. It's one of those leagues where you thankfully get a chance to turn the page quickly with a back-to-back and to our group's credit, I thought our team played really well.
"Good teams find ways to respond and that's what the playoffs are. They're series' - and we've treated the weeks of the season as mini-series' and if you look week-by-week, we've done a pretty good job of making sure we've won the weeks and just the way our schedule is laid out, it gives us that opportunity to prep in that sort of way and view our regular-season schedule as prep for the playoffs."
