Vancouver Canucks forward Henrik Sedin holds onto the neck of Calgary Flames forward Olli Jokinen during the third period of their game in Calgary on Thursday.TODD KOROL
This is going to be a long-haul battle, a fight to the 82-game finish.
All this season, the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames will be watching one another, following their respective NHL fortunes in what amounts to a two-team scramble for Northwest Division supremacy.
Thursday night, the two sides got to see each other up close and it was eventful as expected.
The Flames went on the attack early, scored twice on the power play and looked comfortable behind the goaltending of Miikka Kiprusoff. Then it was the Canucks finding their legs and scoring twice on the power play as goaltender Roberto Luongo steadied himself after allowing four goals on 15 shots.
In the end, the Flames won 5-3 in a game that could have been as one-sided as last year's season opener between these two sides (see Vancouver's 6-0 win at GM Place last October). Instead, there were some hits, some definite feistiness and the realization there isn't much separating Calgary and Vancouver.
Look at how the two teams are constructed: Both are built from the goaltender out, both have dominating defence corps, and both have some question marks up front, namely, who's going to score when the No.1 line is shut out?
The Flames went with a top trio of Olli Jokinen and Jarome Iginla Thursday night with David Moss on the left side. Moss had 20 goals last season and likes to go to the net. The Canucks countered with the irascible Alex Burrows playing with Henrik and Daniel Sedin.
Ironically, Calgary jumped to the lead without so much as a sniff from their first line. Celebrating their 30th season in the NHL, wearing their 1989 retro jerseys and riding the emotion from a boisterous crowd, the Flames took a 3-0 lead thanks to three less celebrated marksmen, beginning with defenceman Mark Giordano. He scored on a power play, only to be followed by winger Rene Bourque scoring on a power play and defenceman Adam Pardy, who blasted in a shot from the point.
That had the Flames cruising and the Canucks cowering.
Things didn't get any better for Vancoucer when, near the end of the first period, Daniel Sedin was flattened by a Dion Phaneuf check at the Calgary blueline. But when Kevin Bieksa jumped in to protect Sedin, it seemed to enliven the Canucks, who were far more competitive at the start of the second period.
Bieksa's power-play goal at 4:02 rejuvenated Vancouver to the point where even Calgary's fourth goal, by Brandon Prust, didn't undo the Canucks. They responded with a second power-play goal, this one from newcomer Mikael Samuelsson. Then they scored 41 seconds into the third period to pull within one.
Burrows got the goal when he directed a shot that somehow trickled past Kiprusoff and into the Calgary net.
Phaneuf capped the affair for Calgary with an empty-netter in the final minute.
Still, by the time the horn sounded to end the night, the Canucks had flexed their will and outshot Calgary by a wide margin (42-23) and that's not going to sit well with Flames head coach Brent Sutter. As Mike Keenan's replacement, Sutter came with the kind of defence-first style that was missing last season. As part of the Sutter plan, the Flames are being asked to limit shots on goal, be smart as well as strong and not take many penalties.
All that went off the rails from the second period on as the Canucks played their way back into a game that started as a rout and ended as a typical Calgary-Vancouver match-up. It was close, it was two remarkably similar teams trying to send a message for what they both know is coming.
This is the new hot rivalry in Western Canada. These are the two teams that will be comparing themselves from now until April. Their first meeting wasn't bad. The best, they understand, is still to come.