Kevin Bahl

Middleton just doesn't seem to know his position.

Maybe he was supposed to be on the left with Ball at the start of the game, but the first goal by Edmonton, Ball made a bad choice to pull over and defend with Middleton against McDavid, leaving his man completely uncovered, and they made him pay.

Maybe Ball was out of position.

Just something seemed off with it.

Additionally, he was invoiced directly.

I think that means involved directly in three of the four goals.

Also, Ball's penalty in the third was a garbage call.

Not that that cost us the game, but the calls were one-sided.

They scored early, and then after that, it was sort of diminishing returns, but it was okay.

So you have Parekh on that spot, and then you acquire Simone Nemitz, and wouldn't you know it, that pairing with him and Ball... becoming a workhorse five on five pairing with great results.

It's like, okay, you can kind of see the vision.

You have one of those guys to play dynamic peak power play minutes and do what he can, you know, to sort of get things going.

And then Nemitz is turning into a great compliment for Kevin Ball on that top pair.

Yeah, and he played 21-51 tonight, the most of any Flames defenseman.

I think him and Ball are usually 1-2, you know, kind of between 10-15 seconds between the two.

But yeah, they're always up there.

Just a really soft clear up the boards.

Kevin Ball keeps it in on the left point.

Moves it down low to Klapka, who then kind of floats it into the middle of the ice area right around the slot to Farabee, who scores the 1-0 goal.

Thought that was, again, based on a mistake.

They made the Red Wings pay when they made mistakes, and they didn't make a lot of mistakes of their own, and Devin Cooley was very, very good when he needed to be in this game this evening.

Let's get to tonight's play of the game, brought to you by your Alberta Ford dealers, and tonight's play of the game comes at 17.50 of the first period.

Ball to left point, dancing, slides it into the near corner, clock

is centered, Derby scores! On a beautiful pass from Adam Klopka, Joel Farabee one-times the puck pass John Gibson.

this guy.

Ball was out there a ton.

Took one right in the...

I didn't see exactly.

high, whatever.

He was okay.

Four hits again for Ball tonight.

I think that led the team.

And then you had Castagna literally getting double-shifted in the final five minutes of the game and taking important face-offs and protecting a lead.

This is a guy that was in college last year, and he's getting put in the situation... four or five games in his NHL career like that was awesome to see and I thought Nemech played a pretty solid game him and Baller turning into a really good pairing like there's lots of lots of good stuff from a game like that and yeah I hope we see more of that and that's I think it's what a lot of fans have been asking from Ryan Huska's put Castagna in those types of situations put like even Sunia was on the ice protecting the lead at the end of the game like put them in those situations.

And that's exactly what we saw.

And I just, I really hope we see more of that from the young guys and we have to be patient.

Let's head back inside the Flames locker room for a final time.

Let's check in with Kevin Bahl, his thoughts post-game tonight, a 6-2 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Kevin, Jake kinda said that really five on five it seemed like a pretty even game out there.

Would you kinda say that special teams were, were one of the deciding factors this evening?

Um, and yeah.

There you go.

That is Kevin Bahl post-game tonight.

Final look inside the Flames locker room.

Stuff like that.

Ball, like Nemec, they were back together, but splitting them up after game one, that made no sense.

Like you said, not having Nemec on power play one.

Greeden just wrote a pine in the third period the other night.

Yeah.

The guy, Zane, was making plays, even though he got, you know, everybody's looking at the plus minus and all this shit.

But Ball and Nemec played together.

They were playing.

I thought Coronado stood out a lot that game.

I thought Kevin Ball was an absolute stud back there.

He looked like Chris Pronger at times.

Just how good he was on the ice and how he was playing.

We're not seeing the commitment in the neutral zone that we've been used to seeing from these teams, the hard working in your own end.

How much would you personally, Robert, you know, put that into the calculation? Because I think it's a small factor as well.

Like you saw the rough start Middleton's off to, the rough start that Ball got off to before he had a really good game against Anaheim.

You know, you have the two roamers in Perek and in Nemec.