Flames goalie Markstrom might've avoided fine for healthy Sharks spear (VIDEO)
Calgary Flames goaltender Jacob Markstrom wasn’t having any of it.
Markstrom might have avoided some supplemental discipline for his spear on San Jose Sharks defenceman Nicolas Meloche in last night’s 4-3 loss against the Sharks.
Jacob Markstrom didn't appreciate Nicolas Meloche putting the puck in after the whistle pic.twitter.com/qSx3Oqtyzf
— Brady Trettenero (@BradyTrett) March 23, 2022
Meloche violated the unwritten rule when he poked a puck over the goal line well after the whistle at 17:28 of the first period.
Markstrom, uh, poked him right back.
Below the belt.
“The guy just put it in the net after the whistle. Comes down from the blue line and put it in. I don’t want that to happen,” Markstrom explained postgame, after Calgary’s first regulation loss of the season when leading after 40 minutes.
The 6-foot-6, 206-pound netminder got away with the spear.
He didn’t get away clean from the slash that preceded it, forcing Matthew Tkachuk to sit for two minutes for the infraction that was eventually killed successfully.
“No goalie likes to get poked at, for sure, and I think their guy poked it into the net,” Flames goaltending coach Jason LaBarbera said postgame. “Any goalie is not going to like that. He took it upon himself to give the guy a whack, and unfortunately he got caught.”
Per a league source, there are no Player Safety supplemental discipline hearings stemming from any of Tuesday's games.
— Ryan Pike (@RyanNPike) March 23, 2022
A fine, apparently, has been avoided.
What wasn’t fine was Markstrom’s performance after the incident.
Though the boxscore shows a 34-save effort, it wasn’t the 32-year-old’s finest piece of work this season.
He’s the first to admit his night was filled with whiffs and bobbles that too frequently — for his liking and for a winning result — ended up behind him.
“Four goals against at home,” Markstrom started. “I thought we kept the chances down. You’ve got to stop all four. I wasn’t good. I’ve got to be better. It sucks when we score three goals after two periods and we should be up 3-0 and we’re not. It gave them a chance to stay in the game. You can’t do that. It’s frustrating. Not a good game from me.”
No concern from LaBarbera on his No. 1, who paces the NHL with nine shutouts and is one off tying Miikka Kiprusoff’s franchise record for most blankings in a single campaign.
“He’s fine,” LaBarbera said. “It’s one game and you move past it. You wake up, the sun comes up the next day. He made a lot of big stops at times tonight. It was just one of those games as a group I don’t think we were at our best. We just need to move past this and get back to work.
“It’s a long season. There are going to be ups and downs for sure, but you move past it and get back to work tomorrow.”
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