Saturday Night. Hockey Night In Canada. The Battle of Alberta. There are few rivalries and scenarios that match the intensity between the two clubs in the regular season. Since their second round match up in 2022, Calgary has fallen back while Edmonton continues to be a contender. Despite this, all of the games are typically competitive with so much embedded hatred between the two squads. After Stuart Skinner won on Friday against Colorado, Calvin Pickard was between the pipes for Kris Knoblauch while Jacob Markstrom got the start for Ryan Huska and the Calgary Flames.
Edmonton Goal 1
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins gets the puck near the blue line and is able to find Leon Draisaitl in his office for the one timer. Markstrom had called out Draisaitl as the threat earlier, but he makes two mistakes during execution. The first is that he opened up into a t-push, which requires him resquaring his skate before he can go down. He then does a good job of leading with his glove, but tucks it in to make a body save before his body is actually in position, allowing the puck to go off his shoulder and in.
Edmonton Goal 2
Derek Ryan and Mattias Janmark break in on a two-on-one. Ryan tries to cut to the middle but is broken up by the back checking Flames. This results in a broken play with the puck bouncing off multiple skates before Janmark passes back to the top of the crease for Connor Brown who puts it home. Markstrom was in a decent spot to push back to the middle by anchoring on the post, but he gets tied up with A.J. Greer who was in the crease, not allowing him to get his blocker free or push back to his right.
Calgary Goal 1
The Flames go corner to corner, forcing Pickard to go post to post. He’s not behind the play to this point. The puck then gets bumped out to Yegor Sharangovich who can walk into a one timer. Ryan attempts to block the shot which takes away part of the sightline which doesn’t help the situation.
Pickard doesn’t make his life easier. He drifts out rather than making a strong push, meaning that he doesn’t gain much depth and isn’t on angle, leaving the far side open. The second thing that happens is he has his glove tucked into his side and not open and ready, giving Sharangovich even more space to the high glove. Part of this is the limited sight on the release, but the second angle shows Pickard’s upper body pushing back as he goes down with his gloves dropping without a reaction to the puck.
Calgary Goal 2
Like the first goal, the Flames go corner to corner below the goal line to get Pickard moving from left to right. This time Pickard slides into reverse vh on the blocker post. Cody Ceci is late getting to his side of the ice, which leaves the pass to Sharangovich wide open and the Oilers’ defender in Pickard’s sightline. Pickard bumps out from the post, but doesn’t get a lot of depth and defaults into a low block. The original shot looks like it was going wide, but with Nazem Kadri getting lost between Darnell Nurse, Nugent-Hopkins, and Ryan, he’s able to tip it into the top corner before Pickard had even reacted to the first shot.
Edmonton Goal 3
Evan Bouchard is able to create some space at the point with the give and go from Nugent-Hopkins. He doesn’t get all of the one timer, with Markstrom seeing the initial release and reacting to that. However, the puck goes off Kevin Rooney’s left shoulder and deflects into the top glove corner of the net, while Markstrom had lost the puck in the black Blasty Flames jersey.
Summary
The Oilers definitely had the look of a team that had spent most of it’s energy on the first half of the back to back against Colorado. However, with the stakes of the Battle of Alberta and chase for first place, they were able to get just enough offence from their power play and just enough saves from Calvin Pickard to win the game. The increased pace put Pickard behind the play a few times and it could have been worse, but he competed on pucks to make just enough outside the box saves. Markstrom was good but not great for the Flames, who are clearly a team lacking elite talent to create dynamic offence at this point of their rebuild.
