1. Forging Forward
Friday's win over Florida was up there as one of the Flames' most complete games of the season.
A team effort.
Solid goaltending.
Offence from up and down the lineup, and a pair of powerplay goals to salt the Panthers away late in the third period.
All in all, it's the type of effort this new-look Calgary squad is making a habit of producing. And since the trade deadline on March 6 - a week that saw a pair of core veterans leave the Stampede City - this Flames group has played .500 hockey, going 4-4-0 in the eight games since the seismic changes to their roster.
Amid the transition, though, Head Coach Ryan Huska is pleased with the character in his dressing room, and he's optimistic that his group will continue on the hard work over the final month of the campaign.
"We’ve got lots of good people in our room. So, you lose some good people, but we’ve brought some good people in," he explained Friday evening. "There is still a veteran presence that we have, and the guys that we’ve brought in are excited to be playing. And I think that matters for our team.
"Even when you looked at our road trip, we didn’t have success on it like we would have wanted, but there were stretches in all of those games where I thought we played pretty well, we just didn’t put the whole 60 together. The last couple at home, for me, have been much better. They’ve done a really good job staying with it."
Friday evening, against a Sunshine State club playing in the second of a back-to-back scenario, Calgary sent the C of Red home happy.
This evening, in an identical situation, they'll look to close the weekend out right, and keep the strong start to this homestand going.
