Flames aiming to build winning culture with late-season heater

The wrong results, at the wrong time, say many.

The fans want entertaining, pedal to the metal efforts, they want lots of offence, and they cherish close losses.

Ryan Strome has heard the narrative ever since he arrived at the trade deadline, but when asked after Sunday’s win over Tampa why it is important in the room to win with regularity, he came up with an answer every bit as impactful as his overtime winner.

“I’ve been through this before, and it’s really, really hard to snap your fingers and just become a winning hockey team,” said the veteran of over 900 games.

“So I think if you throw these games away, you don’t compete, you don’t play hard, those habits leak into next year. Then all of a sudden you have a group that’s like, ‘okay, we’ve got to start winning,’ and you don’t have the characteristics. You don’t have those qualities and the leadership and all those things that it takes.”

“Hypothetically it’d be great to have the first-overall pick, and you can guarantee this and that, but it’s a team game, and there’s a lot of guys in here playing for jobs and playing for their life, and that’s important,” he said.

“The team is trying to build a culture and a confidence moving forward, and having been a part of this before, I know that it’s a huge piece of it. So I think the traits that we’re showing now are great things that will bleed into next season.”

The goal, as he crystallized, is to keep the culture strong.

As undermanned as it is, this team will most certainly lose more games than it’ll win down the stretch run of a season in which the Flames are destined to finish in the bottom five. 

Although unable to bottom out enough to fall below the shipwreck long steered into the rocks by a dysfunctional room in Vancouver, they’ll have anywhere between 8.5 per cent and 13.5 per cent chance to win the draft lottery (Vancouver gets a 25 per cent chance).

After catching both the Rangers and Blackhawks with Sunday’s win to sit in a three-way tie for second last (in which the Flames hold the tiebreaker), they’d enter the May 5 lottery with a 9.5 per cent chance to land Gavin McKenna, or whoever is chosen No. 1.

And while many fans cringe with every victory, the leadership of Mikel Backlund, Blake Coleman, Zach Whitecloud, and now Strome, continues to do a good job preserving and growing a culture in which hard work is non-negotiable.   

Just listen to the game’s best coach for further proof the Flames are moving in a healthy direction.

 “Listen, Ryan (Huska) does a heck of a job here,” said Jon Cooper, whose Lightning had just been stunned 4-3 by the Flames.

“I like the way they play, their structure. There’s guys who played on other teams who weren’t fits, like Stromer. He is a hell of a player. He was just on a hell of a team in Anaheim.

“The Flames lost some big pieces here, but you get the hunger of some of these young guys that come in and want to make impressions this year, but also next. They’ve got a whole boatload of ’em out there. Good on them, they’re a tough team to play against, and I like what they’re doing.”

There’s plenty for an undermanned mishmash of young and old to be proud of right now.

The backbone of the team’s win Sunday was Devin Cooley, whose 32-save performance was the difference in a game the Flames led 3-1 midway through.

After being scored on early, the Flames’ first goal came from trade deadline throw-in, Victor Olofsson, followed by a sublime finish from Morgan Frost who seems hell bent on proving over the last dozen games he’s capable of being the team’s first-line centre moving forward.

Backlund’s slapper beat Jonas Johansson high, short-side, before a Darren Raddysh point blast beat Cooley to make things interesting.

The Flames appeared to go up 4-2 later in the period when a nifty backhand feed from Backlund to Coleman got the crowd on their feet, only to have the goal overturned via offside on a coach’s challenge.

It marked the fourth time in their last three games they’ve been so victimized.

Yet, despite that, and a late tying goal by Pontus Holmberg, the Flames managed to win in overtime, thanks to a brilliant play and centring pass by 19-year-old Matvei Gridin to Strome, who buried it.

A perfect illustration of how young and old are collaborating already.

“For a young guy to have that poise, to hold on to it in overtime and make a nice little slip play is impressive,” said Strome, 32. 

“He’s got a lot of great tools. And you know, a lot of these young guys, you give them a little more open ice in three-on-three, they can make good plays. Backs won the (opening) face off, did his job (was replaced by Gridin), and Grids just put it on a platter for me.

“With these young guys, I think winning is important. To have some confidence and to keep pushing forward here to the end of the year.”

The evening started with a focus on 23-year-old college signing Tyson Gross making his NHL debut in front of a Saddledome crowd he spent his youth sitting in.

It ended with a 19-year-old making the play of the night, capping a collaborative effort the whole team could feel good about.

Those in attendance got their money’s worth, and the bold new direction the Flames have embarked on includes a healthy approach in which wins are coveted. They should be, as there won’t be too many of them for the next little while.