It would appear that the Darryl Sutter effect has worn off in Calgary. The Flames dropped to 4-5-0 under their new head coach with a 3-2 loss on Friday night to the Winnipeg Jets.
Connor Hellebuyck made 25 saves to get the win.
Blake Wheeler opened the scoring to give the Jets a 1-0 lead.
“Our game has been good, our game has been right on for a bit here now,” Wheeler said. “You have confidence, and that can give you a chance to win every single night now. There’s going to be nights where it doesn’t go your way, and that’s where you build confidence knowing that even when it doesn’t go your way, the next night you can rely on a brand of hockey that can give you some success.”
The Jets had a 2-0 lead heading to the third period and needed a third period goal from to offset the Flames’ two strikes in the period.
Milan Lucic and Matthew Tkachuk scored in the third to make it a game of sorts.
“We’re coming off three losses in a row, we need to be way better than that,” Calgary’s Sean Monahan said. “We gave ourselves a chance to come back, but we put ourselves in a situation we were chasing the game. On home ice, we want to be much harder to play against. We’ve got to show that tomorrow.”
Paul Stastny‘s goal in the third period restored the Jets’ two-goal after Lucic had cut it to one.
“We saw what the other (power-play) unit is doing,” Stastny said. “They kind of play downhill, they’re aggressive, they’re always shooting, and that’s when you create a lot of chances. We tried not being so stagnant today. It was a couple big goals there, and that was the difference in the game.”
Kyle Connor also scored for the Jets.
A late penalty to Stastny caused some stomach acid with a 6-on-4 situation on the ice in the Flames’ favor.
“It’s never ideal to go down 6-on-4, but the four guys on the ice did an outstanding job,” Wheeler said. “Clearly, we have a ton of confidence in our goalie too. It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s one of those things where it may happen again at a crucial moment, so it was nice to get the job done tonight.”
Jacob Markstrom made 26 saves in another loss without support.
“The urgency is there when we’re down a goal, but you have to have the strength and the mental toughness to always play through that,” Sutter said.
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