The Calgary Flames had such horrid month of October that they may have buried themselves for the entire season. Players who stepped up big last year, particularly goaltender Dustin Wolf and veteran forward Nazem Kadri, have had trouble replicating their 2024-25 success. However, with almost no league-wide notice, the Flames have recently begun to resemble last year’s scrappy club that missed the playoffs only due a tiebreaker with St. Louis.
Calgary is 7-6-1 this month through November 28. The team is 5-2-1 over the last eight games. In that span, the Flames have earned wins over the Dallas Stars (via shootout) on Nov. 22 and the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Black Friday. Friday’s 5-2 win in Sunrise also showed some of the resiliency Ryan Huska’s team displayed last year right through the improbable comeback win over Edmonton on opening night.
Recent encouraging signs for the Flames
- Joel Farabee has played well in most of the first 26 games of the season. Unfortunately, just he was last year with the Flames (and, before that, with the Philadelphia Flyers), he had almost comically rotten luck in getting pucks to go in the net. Finally, his fortunes have started to turn the last couple weeks. He has five goals and six points in the last five games. Farabee’s empty net goal against Florida was his 100th career NHL goal and seventh of this season.
- Kadri ended his goal-scoring drought in Friday’s game in Florida. His three-point effort (1g, 2a) brought him to a team-high 21 points on the season.
- Morgan Frost has remained inconsistent from game-to-game. However, he took a five-game point streak into November. More recently, he’s had three goals and four points over the last five games. His 5-on-3 power play rebound goal on Friday early in the second period proved pivotal in the Flames’s surge after trailing 2-0 in the first period. It also partially redeemed a costly neutral zone turnover immediately after a takeaway. Frost still needs to generate more assists: when he’s on his game, he’s more playmaker than shooter.
- Rasmus Andersson has played quite well overall lately. It’s almost a lock that the Flames deal the impending UFA defenseman to a contender by the deadline. Toss out the Tampa game — a debacle for the entire club — and he’s been consistently very good from the Minnesota game onward.
Still some ugly losses
Although the Flames have played a lot better lately than they did in October, there have still been some ugly losses this month. In October, the Flames showed an undesirable knack for losing winnable games and failing to protect or build on leads. In November, when the Flames have lost, they’ve lost ugly. None were uglier than Wednesday’s blowout loss in Tampa. Before you knew it, it was 4-0 Bolts in the first period. The rest of the game was a formality and there were still two-plus periods left to play.
Meanwhile, both of the Flames’ losses to the Blackhawks this month (4-0 at home and 5-2 on the road) were rather disheartening at the time. Connor Bedard ran roughshod over Calgary, and the Flames had no answers.
There have been plenty of games this year where Wolf has given his team every opportunity to win — or least stay competitive. More recently, however, the volume of goals in the “not an easy save but not unstoppable” range and even a few “he wants that one back” have increased. Recently, Devin Cooley has seen a major uptick in playing opportunities, and made the most if it. That’s because a) he’s earned it, b) Wolf’s early workload was ridiculously heavy, and c) the schedule has dictated sharing the workload a bit more evenly. That said, there’s no doubt who the team’s No. 1 goalie is.
For the Flames to crawl back to respectability this season, Wolf needs to consistently get back to his 2024-25 form. Calgary still has work to do just the climb back to hockey .500, let alone mount a similar challenge to last year.
Parting words to those who openly root for a full fledged tank job: Be careful of what you wish. For every team that tanks for X years and gets rewarded, three others stay at the bottom or improve only back to “the mushy middle”. Meanwhile, five, eight, 10 years or more go by with nothing but of losses to show for it. Draft lottery picks are no guarantee of anything as an organization.
