Flames 5, Devils 3: A wasted opportunity

The Devils did plenty of good things on Thursday night. Unfortunately, Vitek Vanecek did not.

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A few notes following an ugly loss vs. Calgary:

Goaltending was the difference…again

Jacob Markstrom is one of the league’s best goaltenders by Goals Saved Above Expected. Vitek Vanecek is one of the worst.

That was very evident when watching last night’s game.

I thought the Devils did a lot of good things. Sure, their performance dipped in stretches. That’s borderline inevitable over a 60-minute game – even more so when missing both members of what we supposed to be the team’s top defense pair.

The Devils created a lot of good chances, though; particularly over the first half of the game. At one point, high-danger opportunities were 6-1 Devils and the lone ‘high-danger’ chance the Flames had came from Connor Zary poking a loose puck in the crease that never should have been there.

Just like that the Devils trailed 2-1 in a game they hadn’t given up a single Grade A opportunity in open play. Talk about deflating.

The Zary goal very clearly took the wind out of their sails and allowed the Flames to get a better grasp on the game.

After going through the motions for a bit, the Devils managed to get back on the front foot and start to create chances at a good clip. It didn’t matter.

Markstrom came up with big saves at one end while Vanecek continued to make mistakes at the other.

I’m not going to pretend the Devils played perfect hockey and couldn’t have done anything better on any of the goals against. But let’s be real here. Vanecek was by far the biggest problem once again.

He was too slow to react and get over on Mikael Backlund’s goal. He let Nazem Kadri’s shot slip through the cracks on the 2nd. He somehow allowed a goal *on the ice* on a play where Kevin Rooney – a 4th liner who has about as much offensive ability as Joe from the corner store – was one foot away from him and his only option was to jam the puck into Vanecek. He coughed up a rebound the size of Shaq on Andrei Kuzemko’s goal despite the puck hitting him directly in the glove a second before. And then there’s an Andrew Mangiapane empty-netter to seal it.

Vanecek did make a couple really good saves along the way. He also let in multiple goals he’d want back while looking completely lost in the process.

And, again, he struggled with quality shots. He made only five high-danger saves on eight shots (.625 HDSV%) while his counterpart stopped eight of 10 (.800 HDSV%).

Vanecek is really putting Tom Fitzgerald between a rock and a hard place with his play.

Fitzgerald’s options are to pay out the ass for a notable yet risky/non-ideal option (John Gibson’s numbers have really fallen off over the years, Markstrom is 34, etc), overpay out of desperation for a mid-tier stop-gap (Jake Allen or Kaapo Kahkonen) in a year the playoffs are nowhere close to guaranteed, or continue to ride things out and have Vanecek cost the team points they desperately need. Not a great place to be.

The Hischier line cooked