Calgary Flames players proud of their push despite back-and-forth loss to Blues

The Flames suffered a 5-3 loss to the St. Louis Blues on Thursday in an unfortunate fashion, squandering some very strong individual performances and falling victim to a referee’s decision. After not being able to come out on top, they drop below the .500 mark again this season with an even 10 games to go.

But, despite the loss, there was a feeling of pride in the team’s effort post-game.

First, it was nice to see the team score more than two goals for the first time in four straight games. But, even though they were on the wrong end of a decision by the officials, the Flames didn’t give up, and before we get to what the players thought of it, Flames head coach Ryan Huska felt strong about his team’s effort and predicted that the overarching mood in the locker room was some level of pride in their ability to keep fighting.

“I thought we kept pushing, and that’s a good thing,” Huska said in his post-game media comments. “You have to make sure that gets ingrained in you, that no matter what the situation is, you keep pushing. And I bet you, in a manner, the guys were happy with their effort tonight or pleased with the way they pushed, and that’s what we want to see from them.”

Blake Coleman, who didn’t register any points on the evening but did create some chances that he inevitably could not capitalize on, was, of course, not happy with the result, but he did briefly remark on the effort.

“I thought guys kept fighting until the end,” Coleman said. “I had multiple chances I should have put away and didn’t. We had some good individual efforts tonight that we didn’t reward them for.”

Another player who made his impact felt, not only in the chances he created but also on the scoresheet, with a nice deflection in the slot on the man-advantage, was Jonathan Huberdeau.

Huberdeau is continuing to make his presence felt in a leadership role on this Flames team, and he met with the media post-game as well, saying that all they needed to win this game (outside of the call from the official moving in their favour) was to convert on one or two of the chances that the team’s strong efforts created.

“Yeah, we did [push],” Huberdeau said. I think we didn’t give up. I think we played a solid game. There was a mistake here and there, but at the end of the day, we thought we were going to take the lead, and then they took the lead right after. But we stuck to it, we pushed, I hit the post, there were a couple of chances. At the end of the day, we just have to capitalize.”

If the Flames are going to continue losing games, it’s hard to imagine that most fans would care if they lost them in this fashion. The team put up a solid effort from most, if not all, accounts. They led the shots battle 28-19, although they lost the game’s expected goals battle, meaning they had more shots, but most of them were of a lower quality. Nonetheless, their fight until the end was what the fanbase needed to see over this last stretch of games, and this game, despite being a loss, was a good start.