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Calgary Flames off to one of the worst starts in NHL history

Colton Pankiw
Colton Pankiw
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Oct 5 2026, 4:57 pm
Calgary Flames off to one of the worst starts in NHL history
Sergei Belski/Imagn Images

The Calgary Flamesā€™ season is off to a historically ugly start.

The Flames capped off a mini two-game road trip on Sunday with a 6-1 loss at the hands of the Seattle Kraken. The score tells no lies, as Seattle was the better team on the ice from start to finish.

Looking at a single game in isolation normally wouldn’t give anyone reason to panic. Every team is susceptible to an ugly loss from time to time. The problem for the Flames, however, is that Sunday’s defeat was hardly an outlier.

Calgary opened the 2026-27 campaign with a 6-1 loss to the Kraken before falling to the Vancouver Canucks by a 4-1 final on Saturday. The Flames then followed that up by being blown out by Seattle for a second time, leaving them with an 0-3-0 record and a staggering 16-3 goal differential through their first three games.

That horrendous goal differential has put the Flames in some pretty historic territory.

Only two teams in NHL history have had a worse goal differential through the first three games of a regular season than the Flames. The most recent was the 1981-82 New York Rangers, who sat at an all-time worst -15 through their first three outings.

There is at least a bit of a silver lining for the Flames. Those Rangers went on to finish second in their division with a 39-27-14 record, proving that an ugly start doesn’t necessarily doom a team to a disastrous season.

Flames’ defensive play has collapsed

Seeing the Flames struggle offensively comes as no surprise. They failed to have a single player reach the 50-point mark in 2025-26 and finished dead last among all 32 NHL teams in scoring with 212 goals.

In order to make up for that lack of scoring, the Flames relied on playing low-event hockey and limiting chances in their own end. Defensive play has been an area they’ve prided themselves on, but that structure has completely slipped away through the first three games.

“Sometimes you’re trying too hard to make a certain play, and it ends up in the back of your net,” head coach Ryan Huska said Sunday night. “The NHL is an unforgiving league, so when you hope a puck away at times, teams will make you pay in those situations.

“It’s a matter of us learning from those mistakes and not opening ourselves up right now while we’re in this stretch of games that we’re in. We’re just dealing with some adversity right now.”

The good news for the Flames is that they now have a three-day break to try to get themselves right.

They have a CBA-mandated day off on Monday, but will hit the ice for practice on Tuesday and Wednesday as they look to get back to the drawing board and clean things up.

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