Despite yet another parade of punishment dished out by the Flames Thursday night, the Dallas Stars did well to push back on the ice and the scoreboard.
As expected.
Game on, as the series is now tied 1-1.
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In a game with more hits than Rod Carew, the Flames were reminded of the type of big boy hockey the Stars have relished for years.
For the first two periods the Flames dished it out and they took it, but it was Gang Green that managed to sustain plenty of offensive pressure on a younger Flames club that was back on its heels most of the evening.
Yet, despite falling behind 4-2 late in the second period, and having a third-period goal overturned in controversial fashion, the Flames somehow managed to tie it with three minutes left.
Their gutsy comeback was rendered moot in the final minute when defenceman Jamie Oleksiak finished a golden pass from Corey Perry that exposed broken coverage and gave the Stars a 5-4 win, with the winner coming with 40 seconds remaining.
A dagger for a Flames team that surely understood afterwards the better team won.
“We knew they would come out harder, and we had a lot of trouble the first two periods,” said Elias Lindholm, who was demoted to the third line in favour of a possessed Sam Bennett midway through. “We were sitting back a little too much and didn’t work enough to get open. We battled back and at the end it was tight and could have gone either way. Tomorrow we have to be ready from the beginning.”
The Flames took great solace from their ability to get right back at it Friday night with an eye on atoning for their first sub-par effort in four outings.
They may have to do so without the services of Tkachuk, who left the game on three occasions with injuries. The first came from a stick to the groin courtesy of Jamie Benn, and the knockout blow that ended his evening in the third period came when he was sandwiched by Benn and the towering Oleksiak.
There was a better chance of solving the Caramilk secret than getting late-night answers from coach Geoff Ward on Tkachuk’s status after he was seen wobbling following a final blow that likely initiated concussion testing.
“Chucky is a warrior — he battles hard for us game in and game out,” said Bennett, who was the game’s ultimate beast, with a tying goal, five shots and seven hits for a team limited to one scoring chance in the first and just a few in the second. “We’ll see what’s up with him, but he’s a tough kid and he brings a lot to our team. It was unfortunate he had to leave there.”
In their previous three games the Flames had answers to everything, by way of tight defence, punishing physicality and confidence that gave them tremendous momentum.
Now there are plenty of questions outside of Tkachuk’s status:
Where has the Flames first line gone?
Johnny Gaudreau celebrated his 27th birthday much the same way he has throughout these playoffs — on the perimeter. Never a scoring threat. Ditto Sean Monahan. In an effort to kickstart their line, Lindholm was shuffled, to no avail.
“I just felt like after the first period we really only had one line going,” said Ward of Bennett and Milan Lucic’s wrecking crew, which opened the game with a Dillon Dube goal past Ben Bishop 19 seconds in.
“Inject a little life. Sam’s line was going well so I injected Sam, Looch and Benny into different lines. As the second period went on it wasn’t as lopsided as the first period. For us what we’ve got to take away from it is we were able to claw our way back. For a young team playoff-wise, that’s an important thing to learn.”
Yes, there was one weak goal by Miro Heiskanen that he’d like to have back, but more than a handful of his 31 saves were beauties that, quite frankly, kept things from getting ugly. Yet, in a series with the first four games scheduled over five-and-a-half days, Ward said from the outset there would be the possibility of having to play two netminders.
Is now the time to introduce David Rittich to his first NHL playoff action, with the team reeling from an emotional setback?
Don’t expect an answer until shortly before the 8:30 pm MT puck drop Friday.
Can the Flames bounce back and elevate to the level the Stars were at Game 2?
It remains to be seen how the group deals with the physical toll the schedule may start to take, as well as the mental toll of really having the Stars take it to them for the first 40 minutes.
After a lacklustre series debut, Benn and Tyler Seguin started baring their teeth in a gritty game the Stars needed to win. Struggling to score through the round robin and most of the season, the Stars’ offensive explosion of sorts had to be concerning for a Flames team that made its last three games look easy with stifling defence and newfound moxie they vowed to show after last year’s playoff flop.
The Flames vowed to take the positives out of the setback, which included the late comeback and the fact they weren’t flustered by the situation room’s decision to call back Andrew Mangiapane’s goal five minutes into the third while down 4-2. Mangiapane’s skate knocked the puck in as he fell to the ice, prompting video review officials to deem it a kicking motion few Flames fans would agree with.
A shorthanded goal by Tobias Rieder with eight minutes left set up Bennett’s dramatic power play redirect with three minutes left to tie it.
Enter Oleksiak, and newfound doubt.
“They came out hard but the important thing for us is we were finally able to get our legs under us and come back and make it a game,” said Ward, whose club has lost 11-straight Game 2’s, dating back to 2004.
“That’s what it’s all about this time of year — it’s about managing your moments. It’s not always about playing a good hand well, sometimes you have to play a bad one. You put it in the rearview.”
We’ll find out Friday if that’s easier said than done.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
