Matthew Tkachuk & Rasmus Andersson: Grow Up
Andersson #Andersson
Maybe it’s just instant reaction after a tough loss, maybe it’s a sign of things starting to crumble with the Flames, but Matthew Tkachuk and Rasmus Andersson’s antics after the final horn on Monday were bush league.
The Flames lost to Ottawa 2-1. Clearly they are frustrated. Clearly they are tired of losing to the #30 team in the NHL. Maybe the Flames as a whole are just tired of losing to a goalie in his first NHL start. Yes, once again, the Calgary Flames played against at team that was starting a goalie for his first time ever and they gave that goalie his first NHL victory. Twenty two year old Fillip Gustavsson faced 36 shots and stopped 35 of them to earn his first NHL win. So, congratulations to you Fillip Gustavsson. That’s a career milestone that you clearly will never forget. If you never start another game in your life, you can still say you suited up at the NHL level and got a win. You can tell you friends and family the story for years. There’s video proof. There will be articles. You can show them the puck……well, you almost couldn’t.
After their fourth loss to the lowly Senators this season two of the Flames young talents decided it would be a good idea to take the game puck and make it difficult for the Senators to get it to Gustavsson. This is a real thing, not made up and it shows this team is starting break down. Check out the video below:
Is it the worst infraction in the history of the NHL? No. But it’s an absolute dink move by one player that’s supposed to lead your defence for the foreseeable future and the other is being sold a future captain material. What transpired at the end of the game was absolute bush league and you can guarantee if that happened to a Flames player, Tkachuk would be running his mouth and trying to start some nonsense as retribution.
The Flames are struggling. There are definitely changes on the horizon. Tkachuk has been invisible since Darryl Sutter took over and shut down once he was told to quit the shenanigans on the ice earlier this season. Cry me a freaking river. Get over yourself. You have a coach now who embraces a rougher, more physical style and the thing that you’ve been most noted for is hiding a puck and then firing said puck down the ice after a game, keeping it from a guy who just got his first NHL victory, shutting your team down and turning away, let me look it up, oh your ONE shot on goal during the 2-1 loss. Or how about you Ramus Andersson, of the one shot on goal and -2 on the night. Or your season low -11 and 16 game goalless streak. You two want to be made at someone? Look in the mirror. Your play has been nothing short of mediocre and uninspiring. Be mad at yourself, not the 22 year kid who shut you down and sent you to your third straight loss and looking like the playoffs are going to be next to impossible to get into.
Call me a snowflake, call me a baby. Call me whatever you want. But I’m calling both of them out. What Tkachuk and Andersson did after the game was troubling. There’s no room in sports for that nonsense. Maybe if you stepped up your game and stopped playing like garbage you wouldn’t have to try and make things difficult for a goalie after his first victory. Things look like they are starting to fracture in Calgary and maybe you head to the locker room after a loss and work on how to win games as opposed to act like jerks at the end of a game. Just a thought, but what do I know.