For the first time ever, the Calgary Flames have beaten the Utah Mammoth.
Until Saturday, the Flames were one of three teams that had yet to beat the NHL’s newest team. The others? The two 1970 expansion teams: the Vancouver Canucks and the Buffalo Sabres.
It’s the third shutout of Utah’s six-game road trip — one in their favor and two against them.
Here’s the full story.
Quick catchup
Calgary Flames: 2
Utah Mammoth: 0
At one point, this game was on pace for 225 goals. It ended up with just two.
Yegor Sharangovich broke the scoring open just 16 seconds in, but it remained that way until Connor Zary scored an empty-netter in the dying minutes of the third period.
“Obviously not the start we were expecting,” said Mammoth head coach André Tourigny. “I think the rest of the game we played solid 5 on 5, but offensively if you want to score in (this) league, you need to get in the eyes of the goalie, you need to disturb the defense a little bit more, and we were a little bit too perimeter.”
It wasn’t a particularly eventful game between the two tallies. Per Natural Stat Trick’s data, there were a combined 6.22 expected goals — well below the average for an NHL game.
Everyone appreciates a fight, though. Noted tough guys Liam O’Brien and Ryan Lomberg threw down at center ice. It doesn’t get much better than that on a Saturday night at the Saddledome.
Tidbits and takeaways
The road trip is over, but the work is not
Traveling more than 5,000 miles and playing six NHL games isn’t easy on the body or the mind — especially when you do it all in a span of just eight days.
That’s evident when looking at the Mammoth’s record on the trip: 2-4-0. It’s not quite what they’d envisioned when thinking about an ideal span of games.
Players will be glad to sleep in their own beds for the next week, but that doesn’t mean they can let off the gas pedal. They have three games in a five-day span before shipping out east for three more.
It’s easy to disregard a rough stretch in December, but these games count for the same amount of points as those in March and April. With the standings being as tight as they are, the Mammoth can’t afford to lose too many of these ones — especially against the league’s second-worst team.
A champion’s message
Nate Schmidt won the Stanley Cup less than six months ago. He knows what it takes, and he doesn’t believe the Mammoth are currently playing the way they need to play to accomplish their goals.
“There’s a brand of hockey that needs to be played,” he said after the game. “... It takes the commitment in order to do it. You just have to find whether or not you want to do it.”
That’s not dissimilar to what Ian Cole, a two-time Stanley Cup champion himself, has been saying for weeks.
“We need to really look at our game as a whole, and our attitude, and how we approach it, and whether winning matters to us,” Cole said after the team’s 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 20.
The Mammoth brought in all these Stanley Cup champions — six players who combine for nine rings — to show the rest of the group what it takes to win.
Remember, many of the core guys have never made the playoffs, and most of those who have benefited from the pandemic season wherein there were only seven teams that didn’t make the playoffs.
When the veterans talk about inadequate habits, it’s a sign that something needs to change — even with a couple of big wins in recent games.
A quick ending
A game-winning goal 16 seconds into a game has to be an NHL record, right? Actually, it’s not even the quickest one this year.
On Nov. 22, Brent Burns scored 15 seconds into a game against the Nashville Predators, giving his Colorado Avalanche a lead they’d never lose.
Per a Nov. 28 episode of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast, the quickest game-winning goal in NHL history belongs to Hall of Famer Charlie Conacher, who scored one seven seconds into a game against the Boston Bruins on Feb. 6, 1932.
In terms of quickest goals to begin a game, Sharangovich’s tally is the fifth fastest this season and 406th all time.
Remember the name: Dustin Wolf
The Flames missed the playoffs last season on a mere tiebreaker, and goaltender Dustin Wolf was the main reason their season wasn’t over in January.
The Hart Trophy goes to the most valuable player “to his team,” yet Wolf’s name somehow appeared on just one ballot. At 24 years old, Wolf should have plenty of time left in his career to solidify himself as one of the best of his generation — and his shutout on Saturday was another step in the right direction.
He stopped all 27 shots he faced, and played a role in keeping all 15 high-danger scoring chances out of the Flames’ net.
“At the end of the day, you’re trying to give your team a chance to win,” Wolf said after the game. “So far, so good for the first two home games of this stretch here.”