Pospisil's sloppy penalty adds to Flames' recent woes: 'It's not ok'

CALGARY — Minutes after his team’s fifth loss in the last six games, Ryan Huska wasn't in the mood to sugarcoat anything.

“It’s not okay,” said the Flames coach, referring to a late penalty by Martin Pospisil that essentially cost his club the game Sunday against the Oilers.

“Hey, he’s the type of player who has to play with an edge, but it’s not a reckless-type style that he has to play, because at the end of the day points are so valuable.

“It’s so hard to win in this league that if you overstep your boundary a little bit it costs a team.

“So, I think he understands it, and he’s got to really work to be a better player in that regard for us.”

As Pospisil sat in the penalty box for an offensive-zone high stick on Mattias Ekholm with 10 minutes remaining, Zach Hyman broke a 2-2 deadlock the Flames had fought so hard to come back in.

The Flames were unable to tie it up, thanks in part to an egregious too-many-men penalty with two minutes remaining that led to an empty netter.

This time there was no benching that followed Pospisil’s miscue, as happened earlier this year when he took a pair of minors against Pittsburgh.

But you can bet the issue will continue to be driven home in various ways.

“We’ll do our best to coach it out of him,” said Huska.

“There’s different ways you can do that. A lot of that is on the player. That’s twice now, so it’s not okay.”

While a quick scan of Pospisil’s six minors this season shows no other game in which his penalty led to the game-winner, Huska was likely referencing the fact that many times his penalties have been taken in the offensive zone.

It's almost become cliché to remind everyone that the 24-year-old Slovak became the team’s biggest revelation last season because of his rough-and-tumble approach to the opposition.

Last year Pospisil was 13th in the NHL with 238 hits, and sixth with 109 penalties, two stats that often go hand-in-hand.

In Friday’s win he had seven hits, making him one of the most valuable players on the team given their game plan revolves around being a punishing, hard team to play against.

Still, it can be hard at times to accept such miscues when the game is on the line.

“It feels pretty bad, especially when I tried to be careful on that kind of penalty,” said Pospisil when asked how it felt to be sitting in the box when Hyman so deftly converted a net-front dish by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

“I tried to lift his stick and it was a high stick, ya.

“If feels bad and it can’t happen, especially in a tied game. I have to learn from it.”

We’ve heard him say it before.

And while the talented young winger deserves credit for owning it, it’s hard to believe the lad who had 371 penalty minutes over his two years of U.S. Junior hockey can ever play a style in which he avoids such fate at the odd crucial time.

“Every game I try to be careful,” he said.

“It was bad luck, but I think I’m getting better and hopefully it won’t happen again.”

Pospisil, his coach and teammates all cited a bad start for the loss, which is accurate given Leon Draisaitl scored 20 seconds in and Jeff Skinner scored eight minutes later.

But shortly thereafter the Flames got their legs moving and battled until a shoulder-high deflection by Anthony Mantha got by Stuart Skinner and video review to make things interesting.

A seeing-eye point shot by Yegor Sharangovich tied it early in the third before the Oilers' surprisingly inept powerplay got a jolt from Hyman for the winner.

Despite the absence of Connor McDavid, which has long given rise to performances like Draisaitl’s back-to-back three-point outings, the Oilers have bounced back from a bad start to go on a 6-2-1 roll.

The Flames' great start has been erased by five losses in their last six.

Huska wasn’t keen on the narrative that it appeared these are two teams heading in different directions.

“No, not at all,” said Huska, in a game in which the Oilers outshot Calgary 31-30. “There’s a lot of our game that I liked tonight.”

Dan Vladar was a driving force behind the Flames' ability to stay in the game and Andrei Kuzmenko bounced back from a third-period benching two nights earlier to be Calgary's best skater Sunday, getting double shifted a few times in Connor Zary’s stead.

One wonders who may sit next, as Huska tries hammering home the importance of discipline and that the standard his leadership group has set is non-negotiable.