Calgary Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.
After his team lost its fourth straight Tuesday and sixth of its last seven, Gulutzan provided a scathing review of his team’s recent play.
“We were pathetic,” he said in his post-game comments. “It was a pathetic display. No bite back, no kick back, accept it right down, our top guys didn’t do anything and we need somebody to step up.”
Calgary was dominated by the Montreal Canadiens 5-1, only scoring its goal with seconds left in the contest. The Flames have now given up 20 goals in their last four games, scoring just seven. Johnny Gaudreau, meanwhile, has not scored in 11 straight games — the longest drought of his career.
“[We’ve] just got to man up,” said Gulutzan. “I mean, we play well and one bad thing happens and we crumple. Everybody talks about our starts; our starts have been good but one little shot goes in, we crumple. We just crumple. We have no resolve to stay with it; we have to look internally here at ourselves – everybody, everybody in the organization – and see how we’re going to pull ourselves out because the league doesn’t feel sorry for you.
“[What] bugs me most is we play when it’s easy… If you got that mentality, you got to fight out of it.”
Calgary now sits one point ahead of the Los Angeles Kings for the final wild card playoff spot in the Western Conference, though the Kings have three games in hand. The club is 3-6-1 in its last 10 games.
The Flames were on the second night of a back-to-back after losing 4-0 to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday. And they haven’t been giving themselves much of a chance with poor starts, having now given up the first goal of the game in nine straight.
Flames forward Kris Versteeg echoed Gulutzan’s sentiment after the loss.
