CALGARY – Asked how his club could be swept by the NHL’s worst team with the season on the line, Mikael Backlund offered up a simple explanation.
“Maybe too many of us were thinking about tomorrow’s game, and thinking a little too far ahead,” said Backlund after a 4-3 loss to Chicago that certainly dampened anticipation over Wednesday’s eighth-place showdown in Winnipeg.
Oh sure, the chance to draw even with the Jets with a regulation win is still an enticing proposition for the Flames and their frustrated fans. They currently sit two points back of the Jets, who have a game in hand.
But the hosts will surely make quick work of the Flames if they’re willing to hand out gifts the way they did against the Blackhawks on Tuesday.
“Frustrating — turnovers cost us the hockey game, for sure,” exhaled Darryl Sutter, pinpointing the exact reason his club lost two soul-crushing points to the rebuilding Hawks.
“Some of us didn’t manage the puck very well.”
He was being kind, by refusing to name the No. 1 culprit, Nazem Kadri.
So, we asked Sutter directly about Kadri’s egregiously nonchalant play near the end of the first period, when he first lost the puck at Chicago’s blue line and chased it back to his own end boards.
It was there, facing mild pressure from an oncoming Boris Katchouk, the increasingly uninspiring centre peeled away and whiffed on his shockingly meek, one-handed backhand shovel pass to defenceman Troy Stecher behind his own net.
It was easily scooped up by Katchouk, who fed it out front to Jujhar Khaira for an easy finish, putting the Hawks up 2-1 and prompting Stecher and several teammates to look skyward.
One can only imagine the fury Sutter and several teammates felt over Kadri’s beer-league effort that had Blackhawks broadcasters commenting on Kadri’s “soft” play, saying it “looked like he didn’t want to take a hit from Katchouk.”
Sutter’s response?
“As I said, we didn’t manage the puck very well,” he shrugged. “In close games like that you’ve got to touch all the bases.
“The frustrating part was when you know you’re in that kind of game, you’ve just got to keep putting quarters in the machine, not try to move it all the way around.”
The only thing Kadri did a worse job of than puck management was properly owning his outing.
“Just turned it over – they made a nice play,” he said.
“Ice was getting a little chippy there at the end of the period. We’ve got to simplify our game and can’t make those mistakes.”
As Sutter later added, “some of the guys looked like they had flat tires.”
Yet, he kept putting Kadri out for regular shifts the rest of the way.
Two minutes into the third, Kadri allowed the Hawks to go up 3-2 when his casual beat on the puck at centre ice allowed Andreas Athanasiou to easily steal it and move in for the finish.
“Just a breakdown, we got jammed up in the neutral zone, he kind of came out of nowhere,” said Kadri, who finished minus-2 and had a game-high three turnovers in 16 minutes of ice time.
“I’ll have to look at it to see what really happened.
“Again, they’ve got some skilled players and took advantage of mistakes.”
Both mistakes sure seemed to spawn from an outing in which Kadri’s give-a-crap meter appeared to be running low.
That’s not the player, the leader, the Flames paid $49 million over seven years to be.
His reported rift with the coach simply can’t be ignored, as Kadri was an integral part of Colorado’s Cup run and a player known throughout his career for his fight.
We’ll see how he responds Wednesday, with the season on the line.
“It’s not over – a win tomorrow and we’re back in it,” said Backlund, whose club split the season series with Winnipeg 1-1.
“That’s how we’ve got to look at it.
“If we want to keep our season alive — or playoff hopes alive — we’ve got to forget about everything to this point, and just win one game.”
It won’t be easy as the Jets have been off the last few days, while the Flames were exhibiting fatigue against Chicago.
Jacob Markstrom will likely get the start, as Sutter said Tuesday morning every game was like Game 7, and in those games, “you want to go in with your ace.”
“We’re going to play a fresh team tomorrow, so we have to keep our game simple,” said Sutter, who has watched the Jets score six goals in each of their last two triumphant outings.
“Look at their last two games they’ve played, very same circumstance right?
“The teams are travelling in to play them, and they jumped on them.
“So we have to be ready for that.”
And everyone is going to have to show up.
