Mike Smith backstops Flames with 26-save shutout in Game 1 against Avalanche

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Mike Smith had to wait seven years between playoff starts but made the most of it on Thursday night.

The Flames goalie made 26 saves as he fell face-first and flopped backwards and snagged pucks out of the air in Calgary’s 4-0 victory over the Colorado Avalanche in the opening game of their first-round playoff series. Game 2 will be played at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Saturday night.

The 37-year-old netminder had a see-saw season but had the raucous crowd at the rink on the Stampede Grounds chanting “Smitty, Smitty” before the end of the first period. He stymied the visitors with two acrobatic stops in a 60-second span in the second period before the Flames broke it open with goals four minutes apart by Andrew Mangiapane and Matthew Tkachuk.

The Flames padded the lead with a power-play goal by Mikael Backlund with 2:59 left and got an empty-netter by Tkachuk 14 seconds later.

Smith, who came to Calgary from Arizona in a trade in the summer of 2017, was announced as the starter only Thursday morning. He had split time in the net with David Rittich during the regular season.

“I was a little bit nervous to be honest,” he said in the dressing room afterward. “I think our whole team was. But we got better and better and better as the game went on.”

Smith carried the Coyotes to the Western Conference finals in 2012 when he posted a 1.99 goals-against average and .944 save percentage in 16 games. Rittich has never played in a postseason game.

“Experience is a word that has been thrown around a lot here recently,” Calgary coach Bill Peters said following the team’s morning skate.. “If you have it, you should use it."

Smith had played well over the last month and entered the game with only one loss in regulation time against Colorado in 16 starts in his career. He had played erratically before that and even heard boos.

On Thursday night he was serenaded with cheers. They grew louder when he was credited with an assist on Tkachuk’s empty-netter.

“I haven’t heard anything like that,” he said. “I never experienced what I did tonight in 13 years (in the NHL)."

A raucous sell-out crowd just about blew the roof off the Saddledome when Mangiapane scored the game’s first goal with 5:35 left in the second period. The little left-winger was sliding and falling as he backhanded the puck past Colorado goalie Philipp Grubauer.

“Some buildings are really, really loud,” Tkachuk said. “That was the loudest I have ever heard a building in the NHL.”

Tkachuk, who scored 34 goals and had 77 points this season, deflected in a shot by Mark Giordano with 1:02 remaining in the second period. He was as riotous as usual throughout the game, throwing numerous hits and drawing a penalty in the first period that gave the Flames a man advantage.

He misfired in Calgary’s best chance to score early in the game, missing on a two-on-one as he broke in on Grubauer in the last minute before the first intermission.

The first period was evenly played, with the Avalanche having a slight edge in shots at 7-6.

Colorado failed to score on two power plays, and then another at the start of the second period. Smith sprawled all over the crease to stop them several times on another power play in the third.

Calgary swept the regular-season series and has beaten the Avalanche nine of the previous 10 times. The Flames had had missed the playoffs in seven of the previous 10 seasons but finished with the second-best record in the NHL. The last time they were this good was 1989 – the lone time they won a Stanley Cup.

“I don’t take this for granted, that’s for sure,” said Giordano, who is 35 and a leading candidate to win the award as the league’s top defenceman. “We have seen how hard it is to get in.

“You don’t want to have any regrets. You want to leave everything out there.”

A late-afternoon snow storm limited the crowd on The Red Mile, the entertainment district that is shut down during Flames playoff games. The fans inside the Saddledome made up for it by raidsing holy hell.

The team had lost eight of its last nine postseason games before Thursday night.

The Avalanche had hoped for better after clinching the second wildcard berth by going 8-0-2 in their past 10 games. They were six points out of a playoff position before going on their last-ditch run.

“We started to play with desperation, and with the grit and urgency we had been looking for all year,” Gabriel Landeskog, Colorado’s left wing, said following the morning skate. He had 75 points in 73 games during the regular season. “We are embracing the role as an underdog. Nobody has us to win, but we believe in ourselves.”

It is going to be more difficult after losing Game 1.

“We entered the playoffs as a surprise last year, but it feels different this time,” Jared Bednar, the Colorado coach, said during a pregame news conference. “I think our guys have earned the right to be here by the we played at the end of the season.

“It is up to us to prove we are someone to be reckoned with.”

They played well but were never able to solve Smith.

“The whole game was awesome, but we have to stay in the moment,” the winning goaltender said. “This was is done. Game Two is a new game.”