In the early stages of the Calgary Flames’ latest faceplant against the Ottawa Senators, Kyle Dubas sat alone at Canadian Tire Centre, taking notes on a possible trade partner.
Surely the Leafs GM figured it was worth it to see a few players up close who are sure to be made available at the trade deadline from a seventh-place Senators squad.
By night’s end, it was evident the more likely trade partner could be the Calgary Flames, who are moving perilously closer to becoming sellers.
Calgary’s season on the brink hit a new low Wednesday.
In desperate search of a solution to their scoring woes, the only thing the Flames seem capable of finding nowadays are new ways to lose.
Entering the third period with a 1-0 lead and a 13-0-0 record when leading after two, the new, defence-first Flames failed to preserve the win.
An early third-period goal in the midst of a 13-minute stretch without a Flames shot on goal set the stage for Chris Tierney’s second-straight game-winner with eight minutes remaining in a game that ended 3-1.
It sends the lads limping home with three-straight losses on a four-game roadie that leave the Flames four back of a fourth-place Montreal team that has three games in hand.
“It’s not easy losing two here,” said Dillon Dube when asked if his 15-16-3 club had hit rock bottom.
“We had the game in our favour going into the third and it got away from us. So it’s tough. It’s not what you want for sure.”
As has been the case in all eight outings under Darryl Sutter, the effort was there. A desperate, determined Flames club held its own in yet another, plodding defensive battle that was decided by a few tiny mistakes late in the game.
But looking at the big picture, the Flames struggled to get just one goal in each game against a rookie netminder making his first two NHL starts on a young, last-place team that has allowed far more goals than any club in the NHL.
It sets up what could be a terrifying trio of visits from Winnipeg starting Friday that has the potential to all but mathematically eliminate a Flames team that still has 22 games left.
“Right now we’re really feeling this one and letting it sink in,” said Dube, who was instrumental in the forecheck and net-front traffic that allowed Mark Giordano’s point blast to carom off Alex Formenton 13 minutes into the second period.
“We can’t just move one, you’ve got to feel this and let it motivate you for the next one. We’ve got to go home and come strong and take care of that first game. That’s all we need to worry about – we can’t get ourselves stressed out here and worry about all those 14 games.”
The 14 games he’s referring to are the number of home contests remaining for a Flames team that almost certainly will need 16 wins to challenge for a playoff spot.
The club is 8-5-1 at home this year and has given no reason to believe that without the aid of 18,000 frothy fans urging them on, they can somehow turn this ship around in dramatic fashion.
Sutter once again felt his team played well, despite losing to a team that every other club in the north outside of Montreal has feasted on.
They made a 22-year-old goalie feel comfortable despite dealing with a condition that causes numbness in his hands when he’s stressed.
Perhaps the Flames should be checked for a similar condition after scoring just twice in their last three games.
“For long stretches of the game we were playing the right way – we’re checking hard and the effort is there,” said Giordano, whose club has claimed five of a possible 14 points from Ottawa.
“It’s about getting chances and finishing them. Three pretty hard-fought games (on the trip) but our inability to finish our chances is pretty much the difference.”
On Wednesday, the Senators completed their comeback at the tail end of a lengthy clinic in the Calgary zone against a newly-formed line of Milan Lucic, Elias Lindholm and Sam Bennet that saw Noah Hanifin on for more than three minutes before losing his check on the winning rebound.
As Sutter pointed out, the team had three chances to clear the zone, but failed.
“Both games (in Ottawa) feel similar – we didn’t have the ability to lock it down when we needed to in the final minutes there,” said Giordano.
“It’s tough. This (was) a big trip for us. We’ve got to make plays under pressure in all three zones, and that’s the difference.”
The early optimism that came with Sutter’s hire is gone, as the team is 4-4 with him here.
On Wednesday he implemented significant line changes, with the same result.
Matthew Tkachuk, Mikael Backlund and Andrew Mangiapane were reunited, while Dube played with Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau.
To no avail.
One game after throwing 71 shot attempts at the Senators, the Flames threw 67 Wednesday, which included 29 that needed to be stopped by Filip Gustavsson.
Only three were considered high-danger chances by NaturalStatTrick.com.
Not good enough.
Words we’ve heard far too often from the players themselves, some of whom should start to wonder how much longer they’ll be in Calgary.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
