Flames not going away easy despite loss to Oilers in Game 4

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On a night the Calgary Flames contained Connor McDavid, two self-inflicted wounds ultimately cost the team the game and led to them being down 3-1 in their series versus the Edmonton Oilers.

The first one occurred just 21 seconds into the contest, when goalie Jacob Markstrom had a clearing attempt intercepted by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who capitalized on the empty net to put the Oilers ahead early. Despite the early gaffe, the Flames controlled the pace of play and shot volume for much of the game.

“I thought we had a really good first period,” head coach Darryl Sutter said.

“That’s what I told [the players] afterwards. This is a winnable game for us…and we damn near did.”

"We know we played well today,” Mikael Backlund said. 

“The game could've gone either way…in the second and third [periods], we took away their rush chances more and more and took away time and space. [We had] a lot of [offensive] zone time.”

Markstrom settled in afterwards, as did the rest of his teammates. Calgary’s goalie made a number of key stops, including robbing Leon Draisaitl in the second period with a blocker save. Elias Lindholm and Mikael Backlund scored in the second period 36 seconds apart to make it a one-goal game before Rasmus Andersson was the recipient of a Mike Smith mis-read, scoring from his own blue line to briefly tie the game before Nugent-Hopkins got the winner with under four minutes left.

“I thought we showed a lot of resolve or resilience,” Sutter said.

“That’s part of battling back,” the coach added, referring to Markstrom’s play after the opening 20 minutes.

“We showed really good character as a group,” Backlund said.

The second self-inflicted wound was Andersson taking a double minor with less than three