They head into the first tilt of this four-game road swing tonight in Los Angeles having lost three in a row, one coming in a shootout to tonight's opponent, the Kings. The other two were close tilts, falling to the Avs 2-1 and, most recently, the Blues 6-4 (two goals being late empty-netters).
The coaches and players have talked about lapses in their 200-foot checking game during the run as something they wanted to put renewed focus on heading down to California.
Head coach Darryl Sutter was asked about that after Monday morning's skate.
"I just think the strength of our team is really clear," he answered. "It gets out of whack every once in a while because somebody gets hot and scoring or whatever, but the strength of our team is the ability for everybody to play the same way. And when one guy gets off track or a partner gets off track, or a centreman gets off track, or a winger gets off track, it affects your game. It's the very same thing I said at the start of the year. We're not a power team. You've got to rely on everybody playing the same way and ... I was talking to you about that, they were probably taking responsibility for it."
The Flames have battled right to the end in all three games and have been better in terms of stats in some (shots, high-danger scoring chances, etc.) but Sutter said you can't dwell on that. They still have one goal - finish top 3 in the Pacific and make the playoffs. How they respond and play on this trip is what matters right now.
"That's still part of that learning process, right?," explained Sutter. "If you think you're the better team and then you lose, does that affect your next game? Or does that affect YOUR next game? That's the part of it.
"That carry-over group, maturing players are still learning how to deal with that. Yeah, we liked our games against Colorado and games like those games. We liked the close games we've been in lately, but then play the whole game, right? Don't let it affect anything you do with the next game.
"It's still real broad with our team - it's a really broad picture and you try to keep them in the focus of trying to be a playoff team. We want to be a playoff team. That's the way you have to look at it. You can't let anything distract you from that. You can't let one game or two games, or whether it's a close game. You can't. You've just got to deal with it. We just want to deal with the week at hand. Because the way the weeks have been set up post all-star, when you do it, you can break it out pretty good for your club."
This is the third and final matchup between the Kings and Flames this season, with Calgary prevailing 3-2 at Crypto.com Arena on Dec. 2. The teams are currently 1-2 in the Pacific Division standings, with the Flames up by three points with three games in hand.
"We've played them twice and they were both really close games," said Sutter. "There are three or four things that we want to work on that we want to get better at against them, but there's not much difference in the games, when you look at it. They're close games. We come back and ... You know, they scored late against us, and those are the things we talked about at the start of the year, was, quite honest, our goals against and quality chances against. Things like that. We just have to try and maintain that and keep playing."
