Flames' lack of offence continues to kill them in tight games

DETROIT – Coach Darryl Sutter referred to the loss of Rasmus Andersson as “the elephant in the room.”

However, the reason his Flames lost to yet another also-ran Thursday revolved around a scoring deficiency his club has dealt with all season long. 

“We need somebody to score a big goal,” said Sutter after a 2-1 loss to a rebuilding Detroit club.

“I’ve said it a lot this year, haven’t I?”

He sure has.

Life without the league’s top-scoring line has certainly been full of challenges for a Flames club that can’t parlay a league-leading 31 one-goal games into a rosier playoff outlook.

The Flames now sit at a horrific 12-9-10 in one-goal games, which speaks to an inability to find a scoring hero to replace Johnny Gaudreau or Matthew Tkachuk from last season.

Jonathan Huberdeau hasn’t proven to be any semblance of that guy, nor is Nazem Kadri with any regularity.

Sutter loves to hammer home the fact this is a team without stars, which has become increasingly evident through all these close losses.  

“It’s tough to win 1-0 on the road,” said the coach, whose team sits 18^th in goals per game.

“We’re really struggling to create offence right now, and you’ve got to find way to score ugly and have guys willing to pay the price to get to the net,” added Blake Coleman, whose nifty redirection of a Noah Hanifin point blast illustrated exactly how this team needs to manufacture goals. 

“For us to win games we need to down the stretch, we need to get to the trenches and find a way.”

Coleman’s late second-period goal gave the Flames a false sense of security, which they squandered when Dylan Larkin was allowed to walk in to beat Dan Vladar from point blank with 14 seconds left in the period.

A colossal breakdown that saw Nikita Zadorov caught miles up ice early in the third set up a perfect finish to a 2-on-1 by Filip Zadina that ruined Dan Vladar’s chance of extending a 13-game point streak.

Despite 36 shots on goal, the Flames couldn’t solve Ville Husso more than once.

As the man who directs traffic and creates significant chances from the back, Andersson’s absence was noticeable late in the proceedings.

The 26-year-old defenceman was hit by a car while riding a scooter through an intersection Wednesday evening while on his way to dinner.

He was taken to hospital and released later in the evening, but was held out of Thursday’s game for precautionary reasons, ending the NHL’s 5^th-longest ironman streak of 323 games.

“There was a little bit of road legs in there, and a little bit of elephant in the room first period, maybe,” said Sutter, who refused to accept it as an excuse against the league's 23rd-place Wings.  

“Hey, we lost 2-1.

“We don’t need one guy to step up, you need everybody to.

“The bottom line is you hold a team to that few shots on the road (17) and get through pretty well four penalty kills in the second… you should win.”

Asked if he sensed Andersson’s incident and absence affected the team, Coleman shrugged.

“Obviously this morning there was some emotion hearing about a teammate going through that,” said Coleman.

“But that said, he’s okay and we have a job to do.

“Do I think we missed him offensively tonight? 

“I definitely think we missed him.

“He drives the bus on a lot of our offence, so from that standpoint I guess you could say we missed him.

“But it’s the NHL, it’s the next man up and you’ve got to find a way to win.”

After killing off penalties most of the second period and holding a one-goal lead, Chris Tanev said there was plenty of reason to feel good about the type of road game the Flames slogged through.

However, as the game progressed and goals were even harder to come by, the dreaded third period did the Flames in again.

“You’re gonna be tied in the third a lot, and that’s what every team in the playoff hunt is going to be in and we have to find a way to win those games,” said Tanev, whose team sits near the bottom of the league in third-period offence. 

“We definitely played hard and had a good effort, but we need to find the back of the net or keep it out at key times.
“Obviously not good enough. Thirty games left, we need to win every game. 

“Probably lost ground again tonight, I’m assuming

“It makes Saturday’s game (in Buffalo) that much more important.”

Sutter said he was satisfied with the number of quality chances his team generated, pointing at a partial break for Jakob Pelletier fired over the net and a Michael Stone blast Husso somehow blocked.

Alas, no star power in sight to make the difference.

The story of their season so far.