Flames face first test as early momentum comes to grinding halt

LAS VEGAS — Less than a week after their hottest start in franchise history, the Calgary Flames have now lost three in a row.

Outshot 38-16 in a 5-0 beatdown by the Golden Knights Monday, that thud you heard was the sound of the Flames early momentum this season coming to a grinding halt.

They’re starting to look more like the team people expected them to be — hovering just above .500 at 5-3-1.

It’s what the Flames do next that has Blake Coleman as curious as anyone.

“It’s a long season and you’re going to have a lot of highs and lows, but I’m actually glad we’re getting this (skunking) early in the year,” said Coleman in the quietest of dressing rooms.

“It’s one of those ‘see what you’re made of’ points in the season and we’ll see what kind of guys we have in the room.”

On Monday it was a group devoid of much battle or pushback, a team on its heels from the start of the second period, allowing three goals in the third period by the host’s fourth line.

Rubbing salt in the wound, that line included former Flame Cole Schwindt, who had two assists against the team he was plucked off waivers from by Vegas at the start of the season.

While many will simply suggest the Flames are coming back to earth as everyone expected, the coach pointed out there are no real common threads between this loss and the previous setbacks to Winnipeg and Carolina.

“In the prior games, with better special teams, we could have easily won both of those games,” said Huska, whose 27^th-ranked penalty kill actually killed off both penalties on the night. 

“Tonight was a different story. This is probably the first time this year where I thought we were outplayed.”

Outchanced and outclassed in every way, these things tend to happen to most teams when visiting Sin City.

The Golden Knights have the best line in hockey right now, have beaten all seven visitors this season and generally ride the wave the loudest building in the league provides.

But this Flames team hasn’t been playing nearly to the standard it set the first handful of outings when it played with a relentlessness physicality and structure few teams could match.

“I think we can beat anybody if we show up,” said Coleman, when asked if the common thread was that all three losses have come against juggernauts.

“The last three games, the biggest difference is we’re kind of reactive instead of proactive in reading plays and arriving with intent.

“One step behind and halfway-in-type of hockey, and we’re never going to win that way. 

“It’s got to be an all-in mentality with skating and being hard on pucks.”

You can bet they’ll be a more dogged bunch in Utah Wednesday when the team will be challenged to up their game in honour of Mikael Backlund’s 1,000^th NHL spin.

And how they will line up to do it will be anybody’s guess.

Not that Dan Vladar could be blamed for any of the five Vegas strikes, but it’s a lock that Dustin Wolf will start as part of the team’s alternating assignments.

The forward lines will be a mystery, especially if Sam Honzek is ready to return from injury.  

As Monday’s tilt started to get away from them in the third, Huska put his lines in a blender.

Sharangovich moved to centre, Martin Pospisil returned to the wing alongside his linemates of a year ago, Nazem Kadri and Connor Zary.

Justin Kirkland played a bit on the wing with Backlund and Coleman.

“We’ll see,” said Huska when asked if any of those might be duplicated in Salt Lake City.

“It wasn’t clean at all, so we’ve got to get back to the drawing board, and whether that’s some of the earlier lines we had together, or we have to mix them up, we’ll see.”

More importantly, we’ll see how the Flames respond to the type of losing skid that has plagued this franchise each of the last two playoff-less seasons.

Stopping these slides early is paramount if they are to continue proving people wrong.