You really have to hand it to them: the Flames do begin each season consistently.
Feel of the game
Well, they came out looking exactly like the team that lost to the Avalanche six months prior. Case in point, they iced the puck and took a penalty before 10 seconds had even passed in this one. If you really want to relive the pain, you can probably read any of our recaps from April and get an accurate sense of what the first period was like (briefly: sloppy, uncoordinated, couldn’t get the puck, couldn’t get out of the defensive zone).