In Calgary Tuesday night, the Flames saw their 11-game winning streak on home ice with a 1-0 loss to the Anaheim Ducks.
Shawn Horcoff scored the only goal of the game in the second period at 12:36.
“The calm guy would say it’s just one game, but it was a pretty big game,” Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau said. “The difference in these divisional games, these four-point games … it gets tough to make up games and make up points. You have to do it when you’re able to do it. For a team, again, that had a franchise-record 11 wins in a row, you knew they weren’t going to take anything lightly. We had to battle as hard as we could to get this game.”
John Gibson made 14 stops for the win.
“It was really good,” Gibson said. “We had a game plan to try to clog up the neutral zone, try to slow them down. We did a pretty good job of it tonight.”
Karri Ramo took the loss on 20 saves for the Flames.
“Any time you give up one (goal), you’re hoping to win the game, but it was one of those games where you could tell right from the start of the game … any time we had control in the neutral zone, they weren’t going to force; they were just going to try and stop us at their blue line,” Flames captain Mark Giordano said.
The game-winner came on a sharp angle snap shot off Horcoff’s stick.
“I got a late change there, and [Rakell] had possession behind the net,” Horcoff said. “I just tried to come in, find some open ice, came a little tight and then backed up. He made a good pass, and fortunately it went in. I knew [Ramo] was tight to the net. I took a quick look before he passed it out. I was just trying to get it far side.”
The Flames had only seven shots on goal through forty minutes of play.
“I think in the second, the coaches came in and said they had seven or eight chances, and that’s not good enough,” Flames defenseman Kris Russell said. “I don’t think we had one. They probably had a lot more zone time than we did. We had a good push in the third, but we can’t wait. Against a team like this, you’ve got to have a full 60 (minutes), and we didn’t have it.”
The loss dropped the Flames to 17-17-2 while the Ducks improved to 14-15-6.
“It is frustrating,” Giordano said. “We were right in the game the whole game. We were in a little bit of a rut in the second (period) when we couldn’t get through the neutral zone, and they got the majority of chances. In the third, we evened it out, but you’ve got to give them credit, they played a good road game.”
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