Three takeaways as Flames salvage a point but fall to Hurricanes to OT​on March 3, 2025 at 2:12 am

It was a huge moment that essentially secured the point, but Huska believed it might have been bigger than that.

“The penalty-kill at the end of the game was probably the tell for me, that we’re going to come out of it,” Huska told reporters. “You go through these stretches during the season where you get into ruts. We’re in one offensively right now, but it will turn as long as the work and the compete was there and I saw that right until the end today.”

It was a very good day for the Flames’ penalty-kill, and it’s worth noting that there have been substantial improvements since the 4 Nations Face-Off.

They’ve killed off 11-of-13 opportunities their opponents have had with the man-advantage, good for 84.6%. That’s the NHL’s 11th best kill-rate since the break.

“That might have been our best night on the penalty-kill this year,” Huska told reporters. “It’s nice the guys did what they had to do. I thought their sticks were good, they blocked a lot of shots and Wolfie was good, as well.”

The Flames have scored the fewest first-period goals of any team in the NHL this season, with 38.

Even with that in mind, it was disconcerting to see them struggle the way they did in the opening 20 minutes against the Hurricanes on Sunday.

It’s not just that they didn’t score. They didn’t manage a single shot until there were less than two-and-a-half-minutes left in the frame — their first came at 17:32. According to Sportsnet Stats, that’s the latest an NHL team has gone without a shot to start a game all season.

It’s entirely possible that the slow start can be chalked up to fatigue. This was Game 4 of a six-game road-trip and they had been playing the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers 24 hours earlier.

If that was the case, though, it’s a minor miracle that they were able to bounce back and play a pretty even game with the Hurricanes for the final 40 minutes.

They still got doubled up in shots, with the Hurricanes finishing with 32 and the Flames with 16, but the second and third periods were objectively better.

“We obviously didn’t really have any shots in the first. But we know they’re a team that shoots from everywhere and once we settled in a little in the second, I thought we dominated the second,” Flames defenceman Rasmus Andersson told reporters. “Third period was back-and-forth. Won one period each and then the third is back-and-forth.”

After seeing his team get shut out in two straight games, Huska made a few understandable roster moves before the matchup with the Hurricanes.

The headline-maker was sending Yegor Sharangovich to the pressbox and bringing Adam Klapka into the lineup. But Huska also benched defencemen Ilya Solovyov and Brayden Pachal and brought in Jake Bean and Daniil Miromanov in their place.

The Sharangovich move might raise a few eyebrows, but he’d gone six games without a goal and didn’t manage a single shot on net against the Panthers on Saturday.

The Belarussian led the Flames in goal-scoring last year, with 31, but has just 11 markers through 52 games this season.

Klapka didn’t light the world on fire in Sharangovich’s place, but he did draw a first-period penalty while he was busting towards the Hurricanes net and was hooked by Sean Walker.

daustin@postmedia.com

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