The Calgary Flames knew they had to win at least 1 game in Anaheim, something the team hadn't done in the playoffs since 2006 and the regular season since 2004. Unfortunately for the Flames, the team still hasn't won a game in Orange County in its last 22 tries.
As easily as the Flames handled Vancouver, the team clearly wasn't ready to handle the Anaheim Ducks.
In the last 2 games, the Flames started the 3rd period short-handed for stupid penalties. Both times, Calgary gave up key goals that ultimately hurt them.
The final goal in Game 5 in overtime looked like goalie interference from Corey Perry. But as we saw in Game 3, Calgary will not get the close calls.
The Flames are a very young team that gained a lot of experience. Calgary defeated a solid Vancouver team that had a good regular season. But the Flames need more to keep up in the West.
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Carey Price said the Montréal Canadiens played well early in the series but weren't getting rewarded. The Habs have been playing better in the last 2 games and have rewarded for their improved effort.
The Canadiens look a lot more comfortable. The Calgary Flames struggled with that in the second round.
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The pattern had been set: if the early game goes to overtime, the late game starts on the NHL Network until the first game ends. The NHL Network will allow enough of an overlap to allow NBCSN (in most cases) to catch up so that the game airs on both outlets.
Friday night was a disaster, completely outrageous. The early game went into overtime. The NHL Network was running a message to switch the audience to CNBC. WTF?
In the second round, NBC has been reluctant to use CNBC unless absolutely necessary and on a Friday night, pulls CNBC into the mix.
If you were home Friday night, and a lot of people aren't, you could not have anticipated this switch in strategy. You could record NBCSN and NHL Network, but you also had to record CNBC? Most DVRs can only record 2 signals at a time.
The NHL Network cut out right at 10 pm Eastern to return to highlights and live look-ins of the game the channel was carrying. How ridiculous.
The overtime didn't last too long, but you would have been out of luck … unless you were watching the game live.
Canadians didn't have this issue: 2 games, 2 networks. The early game ran on CBC and the late game on Sportsnet. No issues in Canada.
NBC could take a page from the Rogers playbook and use more than one outlet to cover a Friday late game. Air the game on CNBC from the start and then show the game on NBCSN once the game is over.
This move would have been bad enough with some warning, such as their daily press releases. But there was not a hint of this "new" policy.
Calgary scored its only 2 goals before 10 pm Eastern, but the damage could have been worse.
The NHL Network should have stuck with the game as late as it needed to go. The puck, as it were, was really dropped on this move.
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NBC has been consistently good about showing the anthems from Montréal. Once again, we saw Sara Diamond with the U.S. anthem and Ginette Reno with O Canada.
Even with plenty of time, no anthems will aired for Anaheim for Game 5. The NHL Network couldn't even show the puck drop in Calgary for Game 4.
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CBC will have Tuesday night's game in Tampa at 7:30 pm and, as a bonus, will carry Game 7 of the Capitals-Rangers series at 7:30 pm. The bottom of the hour starting times are geared for NBCSN, not CBC. The Canadian share is way more than the U.S. share of NHL TV money, yet NBC sets starting times in the playoffs.
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We wondered about how the parties would take advantage of the extra off-day in southern Alberta. The Anaheim Ducks spent the off days in Banff.
I found Banff to be very relaxing; the only anxieties came from switching from one bus to the other and searching for (and failing at getting) a medium-rare burger. Anaheim played much better in Game 4 and Banff may have played a role.
Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry are the two main stars of the team, both from Canada. The team has spent a lot of time in Canada this spring in Winnipeg and Calgary.
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The latest new CBC promo during the game is the new CBC app for the Apple Watch. Thanks to the NHL Network for showing the Canadian feeds in the rebroadcasts.
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