These last two nights (Well Tuesday/Thursday) couldn't have gone better for us. Utah and Vancouver lost both games they played in regulation, and we beat Calgary twice. We made up a lot of ground this week thanks to all these events, and we have a chance to do more damage with games against Utah and Vancouver coming up. It's time to put the hammer down and see if this team has that dawg in em.
They had that dawg in em last night. That win made more of a statement than a simply 2 points against a team you're chasing. 2 wins against Calgary doesn't answer all the questions, but that game last night showed me more than simply 'they won a game they had to win.'
They jumped on Calgary from the opening draw both nights. Calgary absolutely spent Wednesday and Thursday talking about getting a better start than the early goal against on Tuesday. And we came out and made them look like an AHL team in the 1st period. We took the first 5 shots of the game and made it 1-0 less than 5 minutes in. Shots were 7-1 when we scored. At the end of the period, we were up 3-0, shots were 15-7, and high danger chances were 8-1 in our favor. Calgary showed life to start the 2nd (as expected) and scored to make it a game again. We promptly responded and 6 minutes later slammed the door shut with a PP goal.
That was about as convincingly as you can win a 'playoff style' game. And when the nastiness came, our group rose to the occasion. I saw a guys stepping up for teammates. I saw a bench absolutely loving Nathan Walker fighting a guy out of his weight class. And then I saw a PP unit trying to get Schenn a hatty and further embarrass a wounded Flames team on the ensuing PP.
We got ourselves a nice lead and then rolled 4 lines. I didn't see any passengers last night. We'll see how much dawg the have in em on a week to week basis, but that dawg was there last night.
Edit: I know we've talked about the need to put a winning streak together, but I don't think we
need to do that over our remaining games in January in order to make a legit playoff push. The 6 remaining games in January are pretty damn tough: @ Utah, @ Vegas, Vegas, Dallas, Vancouver, and @ Colorado. I think I'll still buy this team as a legit playoff candidate if they get 7 points in those 6 games. I'll probably be buying it if they come out with 6 points, so long as 4 of them come from regulation wins against Utah and Vancouver.