If you were to try distilling the Vancouver Canucks’ drubbing of the Calgary Flames last night into one clipped concise elevator pitch of an explanation, one might go as follows:
The Flames spent sixty minutes letting the Canucks enter their own zone while failing themselves to escape it.
Bungled pucks and unmarked men in the neutral zone plagued the Flames all game—from their initial stifled power play to that infamous ultimate 4-on-1 firebombing from Brock Boeser. Later in the second period especially, limp and legless breakout attempts pinned the Flames in their own end. And across the opposing blueline, it was a story of missing the net entirely and flinging shots from the roadside ditch rather than the highway.