I called Wednesday night’s NHL slate “Momentum Wednesday.” Look, I’m sure one of you wise guys could have come up with a better name. But I was too focused on the action. There were three questions that hung over the trio of games on tap: “Can the Devils keep winning?”, “Can the Red Wings keep winning?”, and “Can the Flames stop losing?” The answers, in order, were “Yeah, they looked great,” “Nah, they got outplayed by the Sabres,” and “No.”
As I mentioned in the preview, Calgary is in a tough spot. At the start of Momentum Wednesday’s game against the Canadiens, the lights at the Saddledome were halfway out when they decided to drop the puck anyway, and that’s a fine metaphor for how the Flames are doing. Several years ago, they had a wonderline that they couldn’t keep together, and even though they haven’t sunk to “truly embarrassing” in the past three years, they haven’t reached the playoffs, either. Last season, they overachieved significantly—though still just missed out on the wild card—thanks not to their gasless forwards but to their goalie Dustin Wolf, who despite being an undersized rookie took on a huge workload and proved to be solid bedrock. For a franchise very much in transition, one that’s bringing along its younger skaters fairly slowly, Calgary was undeniably going to be Wolf’s team going forward. A new contract that’ll run through 2033 formalized it.
