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Adam Klapka is the largest dude to ever go well with up for the Calgary Flames.
And so this will have been the largest smile in franchise historical past.
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One of many highlights of Thursday’s season finale — a 5-1 thumping, by the best way, of the San Jose Sharks — was Klapka’s first big-league purpose. This towering right-winger, listed at 6-foot-8 and 235 lb. and now with six NHL appearances on his resume, sailed a top-shelf shot by means of visitors from the excessive slot.
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“It was superb,” Klapka informed Sportsnet on the first intermission. “I’ll always remember it.”
After Thursday’s morning skate, in his ultimate pre-game press convention of the season, Flames head coach Ryan Huska had been preaching the significance of a optimistic “final impression.”
A depart ’em wanting extra sort of factor.
“You at all times wish to be sure, when somebody goes to see you for the ultimate time in an extended stretch, you need them to be like, ‘Oooh, there’s some good issues coming across the nook for that particular person,’ ” Huska stated. “And that’s what we would like all of our guys to be like tonight.”
The 23-year-old Klapka, with a purpose and a struggle, definitely made probably the most of this chance.
And he wasn’t the one man to attain one thing particular as a now-retooling group capped a rollercoaster marketing campaign with a feel-good consequence.
With a back-door tap-in, heart-and-soul type Blake Coleman hit the 30-goal mark for the primary time in his NHL profession. Coleman is as standard as any man within the locker-room, one thing that was plainly apparent with the best way that Connor Zary celebrated after aiding on that milestone marker.
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Each single man on the house bench was beaming once more when workhorse defenceman MacKenzie Weegar fired by means of visitors, turning into the primary participant in NHL historical past to rack up 20 targets and 200 blocked pictures in the identical season.
Masterton Trophy nominee Oliver Kylington and fourth-line centre Kevin Rooney additionally bought in on the enjoyable because the locals stuffed the web on Fan Appreciation Evening on the Saddledome.
The one bummer was that Nazem Kadri, regardless of a game-high eight pictures, couldn’t slip one previous Devin Cooley for his thirtieth, and that the guests capitalized on the power-play with solely 8.9 seconds remaining to rob Dustin Wolf of his first NHL shutout.
Whereas the veterans will report back to the rink Friday for exit conferences and medicals earlier than splitting for his or her low season holidays, Klapka can be on a flight to Abbotsford, B.C., to rejoin the AHL’s Wranglers for his or her playoff push.
This mountain of a person leads the farm membership with 21 targets and 45 factors this season and he continues to refine the uncooked instruments that prompted the Flames to signal him as a relative unknown out of the Czech League in 2022.
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Come coaching camp within the fall, he needs to be within the combine for full-time duties on the fourth line. He confirmed his sandpapery facet with Thursday’s scrap with Givani Smith.
No matter comes subsequent, he’s now scored an NHL purpose, and no one can take that away from him.
“It has proven me a lot stuff that I ought to work on in the summertime,” Klapka stated of this six-game appetizer — 4 appearances in late January, then two extra throughout this end-of-season audition — with the Flames. “Like, I believed my skating is absolutely good. Nevertheless it’s actually proven me that I’ve to do some bit extra, I can skate higher and make extra alternative for the group and for myself. Simply do all of the issues a little bit bit faster.
“You understand, once I examine it to the AHL, it was the identical factor, the identical course of as proper now. So I simply attempt to be affected person and I consider if I put exhausting work into it, it’s going to return. Even since I began enjoying professional again residence, my progress, each time I get to a greater group, it was the identical. So I don’t actually get nervous. I do know I can play higher, however it’s nonetheless in progress and I’ll do the whole lot for it, off the ice, on the ice, to get higher.”
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AROUND THE BOARDS
The Flames wrap the 2023-24 marketing campaign with a 38-39-5 file. They may have the ninth-best odds within the draft lottery … Yegor Sharangovich completed as Calgary’s main marksman, with 31 targets. Kadri topped the group charts in factors (75) and assists (46), whereas no one had a greater plus-minus score than Coleman (+19) and no one logged extra ice-time than Weegar (1,880:17) … One other neat feat — Weegar scored 17 of his targets at even-strength, a brand new single-season benchmark for a Flames’ blue-liner. Al MacInnis, blessed with that scorching slapper, set the earlier franchise file with 16 in 1987-88 … Flames followers, are you questioning which squads you need to be rooting for within the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs? In that case, right here’s a useful refresher on a hat-trick of conditional draft picks acquired over the previous few months. If the Vegas Golden Knights win their opening-round collection, Craig Conroy & Co. will rating a second-round choice in 2025 — as an alternative of a third-rounder in 2024 — as a part of the situations of the Noah Hanifin commerce. If the Vancouver Canucks advance to the Western Convention ultimate, they’ll owe the Flames a third-round decide — quite than a fourth-rounder — this summer time to finish the swap that despatched Elias Lindholm to the West Coast. And if the Dallas Stars can earn a spot within the Stanley Cup ultimate, that’ll be excellent news for the scouts on the Saddledome too as they’d be including a third-round swing in 2026 as a part of return within the Chris Tanev deal.
wgilbertson@postmedia.com
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