Winning came a little easier for the Flames on Tuesday night, and that’s exactly the point now: don’t let one good result become the finish line.
Calgary arrived in Vegas shortly after midnight Wednesday morning after picking up its first victory of the season, a 4-2 win over the Ducks at Honda Center in Anaheim. By the time the team was on the ice for practice Wednesday afternoon, the message was clear - keep the momentum going, keep sharpening the details, and keep building on a performance that finally showed the payoff for the work.
Captain Mikael Backlund liked what he saw in the victory, especially the way the group kept pushing through the game.
"I think we just kept going," he said Wednesday. "I felt like the group was ready not to lose and it was like, 'We're not gonna be denied in here, we're gonna keep pushing, and we're gonna turn this around.'
"I really liked the effort, and yeah, there were some dips in the game, but most of the night I thought we played with a lot of pace and energy, and I really liked that. I felt like the group was ready to win, and we weren't gonna lose.
That’s the standard Calgary wants to carry into a tougher test Wednesday night. Vegas, which reached the Stanley Cup Final last spring, has opened the season with six wins in eight games, so the challenge is obvious. Still, six games into the season, the Flames are starting to show that when they commit to the hard stuff, they can make life miserable for the other side.
The trick, of course, is doing it over and over again.
Backlund pointed to the team’s meeting Wednesday morning, where the coaches walked through what went right in Anaheim and why it mattered.
"We've got to stick to what works for us," said Backlund. "We had a good meeting this morning, coaches showing us what we did well and why we were winning.
"We've got to keep doing that, keep playing that solid game and making it hard on the teams and (making) it frustrating for them."
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