As games mean more, the rink gets smaller. Hearts need to grow and mistakes need to be reduced. This spring transformation fully appeared on Tuesday at the Saddledome where the two best teams in the west fought for every square inch. A visit from the best in the Colorado Avalanche league gave a much stronger game than Saturday’s Battle of Alberta with 14 goals. Tonight the two jaggers barely allowed each other to create 14 high-risk chances between the two. Just like Sutter likes. What he did not like were the penalties that cost them the game, a penalty that Elias Lindholm stumbled behind Colorado’s net that ended up contributing to the final loss of the Flames in the middle of the third. “It’s 1-1 in the third and we get a 200 foot penalty kick from our goalkeeper – a difference between the teams, right?” said the Flames coach, whose killer penalties failed on two of the three occasions. “If you clear everything up, 5 against 5 for the year we have scored more goals than them. But if you look at things for the curious, even tonight, two goals play power for them. It’s the difference in the game. We are not in their caliber “. Valeri Nichushkin took possession of Lindholm’s mistake with a second power play of the match, turning it into a brilliant free-kick by Mikko Rantanen over Jacob Markstrom to give the visitors a 2-1 lead. What we saw from that point on was the closed book hockey one would expect from a team 12 points ahead of everyone at the conference. The Avs won the rubber match in a three-game series without captain Gabriel Landeskog and captain Nathan MacKinnon, who left the team in Calgary for an upper body injury (read: his hand) that doctors examined. in Denver after a Sunday night game in Minnesota with Matt Dubas. Like their last meeting, when Darcy Kuemper made 46 saves in a 3-0 win, the Avalanche relied heavily on their netminder who made 44 stops on Tuesday, allowing Tyler Toffoli to open the scoring in the middle of the second. with an advantage of two people. . “It’s a 2-1 game, it can not get any closer than that,” said Sutter, who was critical of third-place finishes in the penalty shootout, which has now allowed five unmarked power play goals in their last two . Games. “Tsapatsoulis. Two games were very sloppy. Individual mistakes. The first must fall on the ice tonight. He had two cracks in it. The second is read directly by our defender. These are mental mistakes. No excuse for that.” Chris Tanev said the key to supporting their shorthand game is to work harder and as a more cohesive unit, something this team has proven all season that it is capable of doing. Mikael Backlund was asked if he would like a crack in the Avs playoffs. “It means we are both in the final of the conference, which would be a huge achievement for us, but for them as well,” he said. “It would be a great series and we would like to get some revenge from 2018-19 when they beat us (and dropped the Flame who was at the top of the standings from the playoffs in five games). We overcame them that season, so we hope to change things (for them) this year “. The game marked a return to the starting line-up for Sean Monahan who spent the previous two outings as a healthy scratch for the first time in his career. His response was remarkable, as the center-back won nine of his 12 appearances, took a penalty in the first half and even threw his body a little more than normal in less than 10 minutes of play. “He was stable,” Sutter said. “I’m not going to talk about a player coming in and out of the starting line-up. If you are in a squad state, then make an impact. “Otherwise, you are just a squad, it does not matter who it is.”
