It didn’t take long for the off-season debate among Calgary Flames fans to be settled.
Would Chris Tanev represent an upgrade or downgrade on the departed T.J. Brodie?
As the two faced off this weekend, it was made abundantly clear there were no losers in the exchange.
Brodie has stabilized the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ blue line with a steadiness that has allowed Morgan Rielly to shine once again.
And the long list of intangibles Tanev brought to the Flames was on full display in a two-game split that saw him shut down the NHL’s top goal scorer.
One night after scoring a goal, blocking two shots and keeping Auston Matthews at bay in a 4-3 win, Tanev’s blanket coverage on the 21-goal man prompted the sniper to snap a stick on the bench in frustration despite being minutes from a 2-0 Leafs win.
Blocking Matthews’s shots and habitually rubbing him out in the corner, Tanev showed a national audience why he’s earned almost four minutes more ice time under Darryl Sutter than he did under Geoff Ward.
“Did you see in the third period how he jumped right into the shot?” said Rittich, referring to a particularly perilous block on a Morgan Reilly blast.
“When I saw it I thought he took that somewhere to the face. It’s not just blocks. How confident he plays in the defensive zone and everything he can do, it’s huge for our team. He’s one of the best defensive playing guys I’ve ever seen. He’s unbelievable – everything he does.”
In a defence-first system like Sutter’s, Tanev is now all but officially the most important player in Flames silks.
At least in the eyes of the new coach.
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“He plays such a fundamentally sound game and within the structure of what we’re trying to do; he’s comfortable playing against those top guys like that,” said Sutter, who used Tanev for a team-high 24:31 on Friday and 23:55 on Saturday.
“Put it this way, with Chris you can count on him all the time, it doesn’t matter what type of game it is.”
Tanev’s defensive brilliance has not only taken pressure and minutes off of 37-year-old Mark Giordano, it has allowed Noah Hanifin to elevate his game to the point where he’s earning power play time.
Unfortunately for Tanev, Brodie and the Leafs pulled a similar trick on all of Calgary’s top guns Saturday to post an easy win that saw the Flames’ offence fail to threaten Jack Campbell’s perfect outing.
One night after limiting Calgary’s top two lines to a total of just three shots, the Leafs allowed eight of the 29 shots on goal to come from Calgary’s stone-cold six.
Only four were high danger chances, which spoke volumes about just how much Calgary’s top guns are struggling of late.
The Flames found themselves chasing from the opening draw, but managed to hold the fort in front of Rittich until the final two minutes of the first, when ageless Jason Spezza roofed his seventh of the year from a sharp angle.
Zach Hyman’s goal late in the second preserved the inevitable outcome on an evening Matthews was all around the net but unable to finish, largely thanks to Tanev.
“He’s a great player, so as I’ve said, it takes all five guys whether you’re playing Matthews, McDavid, Wheeler or Scheifele,” said Tanev, who leads all Flames defenders with a plus-six rating.
“He hit a couple posts. We got lucky, but we’ll take it.”
The Flames’ second loss in six outings under Sutter was part of a brutal evening for them in the standings, as the two teams they’re chasing went into overtime before fourth-placed Montreal widened the gap to four points with a win over fifth-placed Vancouver.
It was also a particularly bad night for Dillon Dube and Josh Leivo, who both played under six minutes.
“We had a better first period tonight than we did last night, but they switched their lines around and we had some guys who couldn’t handle the size of Toronto up front so we had to move lines around,” said Sutter, whose club plays in Ottawa on Monday.
“We had three lines, probably ten guys that were playing the right way, and like we needed them to play, so we just kept playing them.”
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