Rene Bourque and team celebrating after the first goal of the night.
Amber Cox
March 10, 2011
Filed under Sports
On Sunday February 20, the Calgary Flames and Montreal Canadians played in the NHL Heritage Classic.
The first heritage classic was in 2003. It’s an outdoor game played by two of the oldest teams in the National Hockey League. Montreal took place in the 2003 classic, but Sunday was the Calgary Flames’ first time at the classic, which has 41,022 fans in attendance.
Sunday’s game was held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in McMahon stadium, which is part of Calgary University. When the game started, the temperature was a freezing cold 14 degrees with a wind chill of -2 degrees. The cold temperatures caused complications in the ice; the ice was to be hard, which made it difficult for the players to skate as fast as they can.
Montreal and Calgary only met one time before this meeting, and Montreal prevailed with the win when it went into overtime on January 17th. The final score was 5-4.
Coverage of the game started at 6:00 p.m. on the Versus channel. The band “Five for Fighting” played before the game started. The game was delayed some to fix the ice.
The puck dropped at 6:25. The players’ excitement about the opportunity to play in an outdoor game showed as they battled hard in the first period. Then Calgary took advantage of the situation when two of the Montreal Canadians took their two minutes in the box for penalties. Calgary scored with five seconds left on the clock during the two-man advantage.
Rene Bourque scored a goal on an assist from Tanguay, giving Calgary the lead early in the game. The first ended with Calgary ahead with goals, shots, and power plays. The Montreal Canadians would have to play catch-up.
Calgary struck again in the second quarter. Even though Calgary was a player down, they shut Montreal out and scored another goal against the tired Price. The goal was scored by Anton Babchuk with 7:16 left in the period.
Minutes later, Bourque scored another one for his team, bringing his total to 19 goals this season – two of them in this game.
With the second period over, Calgary’s spirits were up with a 2-0 lead. If Montreal wanted to make a come-back they would have to work hard.
Calgary took another goal away from Price with 9:07 left in the game. The goal was the fourth of the night and was made by Calgary’s Tanguay, who also had an assist this game.
By the time the ending buzzer sounded, Montreal was left scoreless. Goal tender Kiprusoff finished the night with a shutout against the Canadians.
Calgary and Montreal won’t meet again this season. Although they may face off in playoffs, Montreal is left with a loss until they play again next season.
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