Three Takeaways: Nightmare Start Leaves Flames Helpless To Dominant Tampa Bay

Three Takeaways: Nightmare Start Leaves Flames Helpless To Dominant Tampa BayStory byTampa Bay Lightning left wing Nick Paul (20), defenceman Charle-Edouard D'Astous (51), defenceman Emil Lilleberg (78) and centre Gage Goncalves (93) react after a goal against the Calgary Flames in their game at Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, Florida (Source: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images)Ismail FasihThu, November 27, 2025 at 3:14 AM UTC·2 min read

The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Calgary Flames 5-1 on early Wednesday NHL action.

Here are the takeaways:

Brutal Start

The Lightning scored three goals on Calgary before even the six-minute mark. It was an embarrassing effort for Dustin Wolf as neither of those goals were considered high-danger goals. The game was basically done by then as everything else was cosmetic. Apart from Wolf, the Flames were outshot 20-8 in total shots in the the first period in even-strength hockey. They could only get six more shots in 5:04 of first period PP action, yet couldn't score.

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Speaking of power play, the Flames were on the man-advantage for the fourth-longest this season (8:23) and the third-longest where they've come away with zero PP goals. In a game where you are fighting from behind, you need to play with urgency and score.

Ideally, I'm against even being on the PK , even though Calgary was shorthanded for the eighth-lowest time without giving up a PP goal (6:23) in their 25th game of the season. But they still came out with a rare back-to-back shorthanded goal, and that's a consolation prize, if there can be any, in the end.

Goalies

Not going to sugar-coat it.  Wolf gave up three goals on an Expected Goal Against (xGA) value of 0.10.

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I don't even bring up Expected Goals in my articles but I have to just to emphasize how little that is.

0.10?

That's barely of anything...

Devin Cooley managed 17 saves off 19 shots in his relief for a save percentage of 0.895.

Bottom Line

The Flames did put up their highest number of high-danger scoring chances (19) in even-strength hockey in any game this season, so the offence is improving.

All is not lost.

It was just a bad game with a bad start.

The Florida Panthers are up next.

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