Ramo hot but Ducks still douse Flames

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Corey Perry has played a lot of hockey over the years, so he knew the possible scenario that was shaping up.

There was Karri Ramo, starting his first-ever NHL playoff game, playing lights-out great for the Calgary Flames in goal.

Ramo faced 20 first-period shots on Sunday night, and gave up just the one goal to Perry's Anaheim Ducks. He alone allowed the Flames to hang around the game just long enough to make you think it could go the other way. Goaltenders have a way of leveling the playing field sometimes.

"It could have," conceded Perry, in the immediate aftermath of Sunday's 3-0 Anaheim win, "but I thought we stuck with our game plan and battled through that – because he made some big saves. There were some tense moments early, but we found a way to get one in, and push forward."

Ramo replaced Game 1 starter Jonas Hiller for Calgary and almost helped the visitors pull out another one of their patented third-period comebacks.

Just as they did in the opener, the Ducks controlled all the possession early. If Ramo had struggled the way Hiller did in the opener, the Flames would have been blasted out of the Honda Center for the second consecutive game.

But Ramo kept the Flames close and gradually, the Flames made up the difference on the shot clock and were pressing for the tying goal when the Ducks' Hampus Lindholm scored his first playoff goal of the spring with 8:15 to shift the momentum back Anaheim's way.

The two-goal cushion pretty much took the life out of Flames in a game that ended 3-0 Anaheim, with Nate Thompson scoring an empty netter with 2:16 to go in regulation. The victory gave the Ducks a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Pacific Division final, with Game set for Tuesday night at the Scotiabank Saddledome.

Perry set up Lindholm's goal, a hard wrister from the faceoff circle, by dropping a pass to the Ducks' defender and then going to the front of the net to screen Ramo as the puck zoomed past him.

At that point, the capacity crowd at the Honda Center started chanting "we want Hiller, we want Hiller" - presumably aware of how dangerous Ramo was to the home team's chances.

"He kept us in it," said Flames' winger David Jones, of Ramo's play. "He played great. We've got to do a better job at the start of the game – to help him out a little more. This definitely wasn't his fault."

The Ducks have the edge in all the important tangible areas – more size, more talent, more experience – and they also got a strong game from goaltender Frederik Andersen, who recorded the shutout. In two games, the Ducks have surrendered just a single goal to the Flames, something Perry attributes to the fact that "we're not letting them skate through the neutral zone, or penetrate through our blue line. That's kind of our game plan – to shut them down early and not get them get in our own end."

It was a night when Flames' coach Bob Hartley searched long and hard for line combinations that might create some offence against a Ducks' team that didn't give the Flames much five-on-five. Hartley seemed determined to try just about anybody except rookie-of-the-year candidate Johnny Gaudreau in his usual spot, at left wing on the first line with Jiri Hudler and Sean Monahan. Instead, Sam Bennett started there, and for the longest succession of shifts in the first period and heading late into the second, rookie David Wolf found himself in that spot.

Wolf, an NHL rookie, played three games for Calgary this season, but drew into the line-up as a result of Micheal Ferland's absence with an undisclosed injury. Wolf is a 6-3, 215-pound 25-year-old from Dusseldorf, Germany, who spent most of the year playing for their AHL affiliate in Adirondack. In the warm-up, Wolf jabbed the Ducks' Corey Perry with his stick as the two skated past each other near the centre red line, but in the actual game, Wolf's foot speed – or lack thereof – made it difficult for him to get in quickly enough on the forecheck.

Eventually, Hartley abandoned the experiment and moved Wolf down the depth chart to the fourth line, with Josh Jooris and Brandon Bollig and put his traditional lines together.

Collectively, the Flames vowed to carry their second-half efforts forward into the next game, on their home ice.

"We just turned the puck over too much," said Jones. "They're a talented team. They've got a lot of speed. We did a better job of being more urgent in the third and we've got to play that way the whole game."

In a weekend where boxing dominated the sports headlines, it'd be fair to say that the Flames played a rope-a-dope style early, waiting for the bell to end an opening period in which they were thoroughly outplayed. Ryan Kesler, added by the Ducks last summer in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks, largely for what he could bring in the playoffs, had a monstrously effective first 20 minutes.

Not only did he set up Matt Beleskey for the opening Anaheim goal on a neatly executed two-on-one, he also rang a shot so hard off the crossbar that it had to be reviewed by the war room in Toronto before it was determined to have stayed out.

"We knew we'd get their best push, and I thought we generated a lot in the first," said Kesler. "They came back strong in the second period. They threw a lot at Freddie, but he stood tall. He threw up a zero for us."

Gradually, the Flames started to gather their composure and made something on a push-back in the second period. Ramo didn't need to be nearly as acrobatic, his Ducks' counterpart Andersen actually made three more saves – 12 as opposed to nine – than he did.

But it still looks like a long uphill climb for the Flames, even if they get a much-needed energy boost from their supportive crowd.

"We can talk all we want about how we can compete with these guys, but we've got to show we can," said Flames' defenceman Kris Russell. "I thought we did there in the second and third. We've got to build from that.

"It doesn't mean it's going to get easier. It doesn't mean we go home and we're just going to find our game. We've got to earn everything against this team."

Venturing into hostile Canadian territory won't be anything new to the Ducks, however.

They did it the previous round against the Winnipeg Jets and won that series in four consecutive games. Anaheim is the last remaining undefeated team in the 2015 NHL playoffs – and while the Flames will undoubtedly point to their second half performance in Sunday's loss as a reason to be optimistic for Tuesday, the Ducks have cause for confidence too, surrendering just the single goal in the first 120 minutes and keeping Calgary's snipers – Hudler, Gaudreau and Monahan – from making much of an impact.

"You're always in a series until you start losing at home," said Jones. "That's the way we're going to look at it. It would have been nice to pick up one here. We're going to have to win here eventually, but going home, in front of our fans, we've just got to worry about Game 3 and get a 'W' there and hopefully carry some momentum into Game 4."