CALGARY — Minutes after a prolonged standing ovation punctuated the heartbreaking conclusion to the Calgary Flames’ playoff dreams, MacKenzie Weegar demonstrated why he is the team’s future captain.
Epitomizing the heart and pride that spurred his club to the most unlikely of playoff pushes, the Flames veteran put his team’s shockingly entertaining season in perspective.
“I’m sure everybody was saying, it’s ‘sad, disappointing and whatnot,’ but for me it was, ‘what a hell of a fight,’” Weegar said after the Flames were eliminated 81 games into the season by a goal scored 2,000 km away in Minnesota with 20.9 seconds remaining in a game between the Wild and Ducks.
“It just says a lot about the culture and the identity here. I think for next year it kind of sets us up to have higher standards and higher expectations. When expectations were low, we proved people wrong, we did the right thing. Nobody thought we could have done this this year. Well, next year, people know that we can do this. That’s what I want here, I want the high expectations. I want people to think that we’re going to be in the playoffs.
“There’s a lot of good things that happened this year, and we took a lot of steps forward.”
They did it as a group, with a work ethic, a never-say-die attitude and a goalie whose brilliance made it at all possible to stay in a post-season hunt that came down to Tuesday’s action.
The veterans set the standard, the youngsters followed.
Coming from behind most nights to piece together a 10-2-3 record down the stretch, the Flames needed help from either St. Louis or Minnesota Tuesday to keep the spring dream alive.
As usual, they didn’t get it, learning in the second intermission a Blues win, and the Wild’s late, game-tying goal, made the Flames’ third period against Vegas moot.
Yet, symbolic of what made this team so special, they erased a 3-1 deficit one minute into the final frame and went on to post a 5-4 shootout victory that had the Saddledome jumping.
“We stuck to who we are, and we said, ‘let’s do it for ourselves, let’s do it for each other, and let’s do it for the fans — give them one more comeback,” said Weegar of the motivation they somehow summoned.
How fitting that Wolf stopped the Golden Knights’ last shootout attempt, enthralling a capacity crowd that stayed until the very end to salute the Flames for a season that had so many fall in love with the hard-working team.
“I think that’s just the intelligent fans,” said Weegar of the one-minute long ovation showered upon the crestfallen team circling centre ice with raised sticks.
“They know how hard we worked for them this year and they gave us the standing ovation, as well as a second one that went a little longer. We feel the appreciation from them, and I guess we proved to them that it goes both ways.
“We respect their passion and we show up for them every day to work hard and get this team to where they want it to be.
“At the end of the day, it is not good enough, because we want playoffs, and we couldn’t get it done. So there is still a little bit of disappointment, for sure. But just how close the group is and how proud everyone is it just overshadows that part right now.”
On Thursday the Flames round out the schedule in Los Angeles where another chapter will begin for the team via debuts for Aydar Suniev and Zayne Parekh.
The highly-touted draft picks will start their NHL careers in a healthy environment no tanking team could provide.
The list of youngsters that grew leaps and bounds this season was lengthy, and the team is much further along in its rebuild than anyone could have expected.
“I just look back and love this group of guys,” said Weegar, lamenting how unlucky his team was to come up against a Blues bunch that fashioned a 12-game winning streak down the stretch.
“It’s a special group. This group came together at the beginning of the year and I’m proud of the perseverance and the leadership from everybody, and the belief.
“Everybody bought in and came to work for one another this year.
It’s just too bad we couldn’t see the damage we could have done in the playoffs.”
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