5 Things - Flames @ Canucks

1. About Last Night

It was one their best, most complete efforts of the season.

And Ryan Lomberg – energy forward, fan-favourite and hype-man extraordinaire – certainly agreed.

“That's a (bleeping) good game, lads," he shouted, captured by FlamesTV, as the team left the ice following an impressive 3-1 win over the visiting LA Kings. “Holy (bleep), eh, there's a full 60!”

Indeed, what the locals put on the ice Monday in front of a raucous home crowd was the culmination of everything Head Coach Ryan Huska and his gutsy squad have preached over the past month.

They started on time, put the pedal to the floor – and, quite simply, never looked back.

Sure, Trevor Moore spoiled Dustin Wolf’s shutout bid with 2:31 to play, but the Flames were the better team throughout. They survived the Kings’ late push, before Kevin Rooney fired into the empty cage at 19:40 to secure a clean, connected, two-goal victory.

Mikael Backlund and Jonathan Huberdeau supplied the rest of the offence, while Wolf – who came oh-so close to recording his first-career bagel – finished with 28 stops and was named the game’s first star.

“There was a lot of good,” Huska said. “Even when we didn’t have the puck, I thought we weren’t cheating the game at all, we weren’t looking to hope a puck was going to bounce our direction and maybe get an offensive opportunity. I thought there was commitment to play the game the right way tonight from everybody.”

Certainly, that includes their goaltender, who moved to 5-2-1 on the year, along with a .913 save percentage and a 2.84 goals-against average with the victory.

"That was a full 60 minutes from our group," Wolf said. "That’s what we should expect from ourselves. When we play like that, we put ourselves in an opportunity to win every night."

2. Know Your Enemy

Vancouver’s three-game winning streak came to a screeching halt on Saturday, as the Canucks looked out of sorts in a 7-3 loss to the Oilers at Rogers Arena.

The Connors – McDavid and Brown (2) – along with former Flame Brett Kulak, helped Edmonton pull away with four unanswered goals in the third period.

Elias Pettersson and Filip Hronek struck less than two minutes apart in the middle frame, trimming the deficit after the homeside fell behind 3-0. Pius Suter then rounded out the offence with a powerplay marker in the final minute, but by then, the result was well in hand.

“We had a good push in the second, we got some life,” Pettersson told NHL.com. “It set us up well in the third, but they came out harder and wanted it more.”

“When we got back 3-2, I liked our second and then a couple of miscues, executions, it’s in our net,” added coach Rick Tocchet. “After that, we lost juice. We looked really tired. McDavid started to go into third and we just couldn't match it.”

Kevin Lankinen was pulled in the third period after allowing seven goals on 27 shots, as the first-year Canuck suffered his first regulation defeat of the campaign (7-1-2). Arturs Silovs tagged in and made four stops in 8:55 of relief action.

“He’s a competitor. He hung in there,” Tocchet said. “That guy is a fighter. He’s the least of our problems.”

The Canucks were without leading goal-getter Brock Boeser, who was forced to leave the Nov. 7 game in Los Angeles after an illegal check to the head by Kings forward Tanner Jeannot.

This is a second of a six-game homestand for the Canucks, who enter the night with only a single victory in downtown Vancouver this year (1-2-3).

3. Fast Facts

Franchise Lore:

With his assist last night, Mikael Backlund recorded his 336th career helper to tie Paul Reinhart and Guy Chouinard for the seventh-most in Flames history. Backlund also scored to record his 152nd even-strength goal and is now only one away from tying Lanny McDonald for the sixth-most in franchise history. The only players to score more are Jarome Iginla (351), Theo Fleury (229), Gary Roberts (199), Joe Nieuwendyk (173) and Johnny Gaudreau (164).

Matt Score-onato:

Matt Coronato extended his point streak to a career-best four games (3G, 2A) with an assist last night. Coronato has now scored five goals and registered seven points on the season, while his +7 rating is tied with J.J. Moser for the highest among all skaters drafted in 2021.

Did You Know?

Monday's game was Ryan Huska’s 100th as an NHL head coach.

4. Players To Watch

Flames - Connor Zary

It’s rare for a player to close out the night with zeroes on the scoresheet, but still be feted with second-star honours in the postgame curtain call.

That’s how good – how positively electric – Connor Zary was on Monday as he sashayed all over the ice and piled up game-high five shots.

Whether it was pulling off a beautiful toe-drag and turnstiling Vladislav Gavrikov before breaking in alone, or showing great speed and splitting D before ringing a backhand off the crossbar, Zary looked like a man on a mission.

“I feel great,” he said. "I think my game’s been really good and I feel good about it. I’ve got to put the puck in the back of the net, and the chances are great; eventually, you’ve got to start to produce, so that’s a bit frustrating. But I think overall, I can’t complain with how the overall game’s been played."

We’ll see what he has planned for an encore tonight. After all, Rogers Arena has been good to him already once this season.

For more on Zary, click to read

Canucks - Quinn Hughes

The reigning Norris Trophy winner enters the night with seven points (1G, 6A) on a four-game point streak, and now has nine (2G, 7A) in his last six, overall.

Hughes is four points clear of Brock Boeser, J.T. Miller and Conor Garland for the team scoring lead with 15 points (3G, 12A) in 13 games, putting him on track to best the career-high 92 points he bagged last year.

The 25-year-old workhorse is logging an average of 24:52 per game in ice time and leads all Vancouver skaters in almost every advanced metric, including possession (63.82%), scoring chances (both medium- and high-danger), and expected goal share (65.85%).

5. Quotable

Jonathan Huberdeau on the win over the Kings:

"I said (Monday) morning that we needed to start on time and be all over them, and that’s what we did. I think doing it over and over wears them down, (and) that’s what we did."

Zary on the 60-minute effort his team put forward:

"I think we’ve talked about our starts a lot, especially on that road trip. We knew as a team we came out flat, had to claw back. We’ve been good at that, playing from behind. We really wanted to come out and have a start, get a lead. I think that was really good by us, to get that full 60, that was a lot like how we started the year. We’ve kind of been back and forth a bit, but when you see games like that, and our (ability) to be complete like that, it’s huge for us."