The Washington Generals manage more net time against the Harlem Globetrotters.
“We didn’t score any goals because we didn’t do enough things to score goals,” said head coach Brent Sutter. “Their goalie had an easy night. He sees every shot. We need to have guys pay a bigger price. It’s been going on all year, and that’s why goals aren’t happening for us.
“There’s not a big enough price (being paid) in the offensive zone. Everyone wants to be a shooter and no one wants to get into tough areas. We want everything to be a 30-, 40-, 50-foot goal instead of being a 10-footer or five-foot goal. It’s got to change, and it’s got to change very quickly.”
With deadline day passing and the Flames adding a solid and experienced backup goaltender in Vesa Toskala, and a gritty defenceman in Steve Staios, the only question is who is going to get goals for this team?
They’ve been shut out four times (italics) at home (end/italics) since mid-January.
Jarome Iginla lit it up at the Olympics, but he was nowhere near adding to his NHL total Wednesday night against a suspect Wild defence.
Christopher Higgins’ broken blade came closer to the net than the puck on his third-period shot.
“Nothing surprises me anymore this year,” said a clearly demoralized Higgins. “I really don’t know what to say about that.”
The best Flames chance may have been from fourth-line winger Jamal Mayers, who couldn’t get the puck high enough to beat Nicklas Backstrom in the second period even thought he Wild goaltender was flat on his face when he made the glove save inches off the ice.
Control the play all you want — and the Flames did for a large chunk of the first and second stanzas — if you can’t finish, you’re finished.
“We just played a bad hockey game,” said centre Matt Stajan. “My line couldn’t generate anything, gave up a lot of odd-man rushes, and they capitalized.
“It’s tough to play from behind against a team like that.
“You want to control the play. At the end of the day you’ve got to score a few goals and gain momentum that way.”
The Wild snared momentum with a little more than a minute left in the first period when Kyle Brodziak broke a scoreless stalemate past an outstretched Miikka Kiprusoff to give the visitors the lead heading into the first intermisision.
Goals from Andrew Brunette and Mikko Koivu completely quashed hopes of a comeback. Martin Havlat’s third-period tally just added to the insult.
“It’s very frustrating because you let a couple (of points) go right now, it might be the ones you need,” defenceman Cory Sarich said of the dogfight for the final playoff positions in the Western Conference.
“We need them all right now.”
Desperately. Every Flames player, fan and coach realizes that. Only the players can do something about it.
“Those two points are as big as any two points,” said Stajan. “We can’t do anything about it now but make sure we don’t have any more games like that, because we’ll be out of it before we know it.”
