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What Ryan Huska said after ugly effort from Calgary Flames

Colton Pankiw
Colton Pankiw
|
Mar 15 2025, 12:00 pm
What Ryan Huska said after ugly effort from Calgary Flames
Sergei Belski/Imagn Images

The Calgary Flames pushed hard late, but it wasn’t enough to make up for an abysmal first two periods in last night’s 4-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche.

Most would have expected the Flames to push hard after dropping a crucial game versus the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday. They did the exact opposite, registering just three shots through the first half of the game.

“I thought we had a good push in the third period. I didn’t like our first two periods,” head coach Ryan Huska said. “I thought we had too many guys that were not fully into the game tonight, like maybe three quarters to start with, and then halfway through the game, I thought we started to get more engaged.”

The Avalanche possess some of the NHL’s most elite talent in superstars Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar. The Flames managed to keep both off the scoresheet, though it seemed like they played extremely tentative in an effort to try and limit chances against.

“I felt at times [we] respected them way too much early in the game, that was pretty evident to me,” Huska said. “The detail, the structural side of it was fine, but it was like we were waiting for something to happen. … Early on in the third period, we just played, trusted [our] game, trusted [our] instincts and played.”

The Flames did push in the third, as they were able to cut the Avalanche’s deficit to 2-1 thanks to a goal from Blake Coleman. There are no morale victories this late into a season, but it does go to show they are capable of competing against the league’s top teams.

“We didn’t quit. I liked the response in the third,” Coleman said. “I thought we were the better team in the third. It was just too little too late.”

Despite the rather uninspiring performance, Coleman wasn’t the only part of this Flames leadership group who was able to take away some positives.

“If we play like we did in the third, we’ll be fine,” Rasmus Andersson said. “We’ve just got to find that desperation in the first two periods. It’s almost like the complete opposite from the last two games [where] we had two good periods in the last two games, and the third we [weren’t] there. Then today it’s two bad periods and the third is there. We’ve got to figure out how to play 60 minutes.”

The Flames do still occupy the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference, but have both the Vancouver Canucks and Utah Hockey Club hot on their tail. They’ll look to snap their two-game skid on Monday versus the Toronto Maple Leafs.

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