**What a shot by Yelle to score the opening goal! That's the kind of offensive skillz we've come to know and love from the man who scored 4 goals this year. I think he could have blown it over the goal line with more velocity.

**Yelle again: that was a bad penalty. In the context of the 2006 Playoffs, I thought the refs did a decent job (except for calling back that Ducks goal in the 1st, of course). There was some cosmic hockey justice, in that the only PP goal of the game was scored on Yelle's dumb penalty: that and Rob Niedermayer's high-sticking penalty were the only fouls that were legit, no-brainer calls under any standard of enforcement.

**Counterintuition: the idea of throwing an OT game is irrational, but I think I could construct a case advising the Flames to decline the powerplay early in the game, before everyone has had at least two shifts. Whatever sense of urgency the Flames enter the game with just seems to dissipate on and after an early PP. When you go on the PP 23 seconds into the game, the basic result is that ten of your top players take their first shift with a "patient" mentality rather than a frantic one. I don't know if this is unique to the Flames, but I hate the way it sets the tone, especially the ~82% of the time when it doesn't result in a goal.

**Don Wittman: isn't it time to rest up for curling season yet? The CBC (and everyone else) keeps the same broadcast team following a whole series. Logistical concerns aside, I assume the primary rationale is that they can more readily refer back to earlier moments of the series at relevant times. Well, I've decided that this is a bug of the system, not a feature. Wittman is driving me mental referring back to the same six incidents/comments over and over again.

I've also mentioned his over-reliance on the stat sheets. Last night, he deemed it worthy of mention that "Joe DiPenta is the only Mighty Duck not to have registered a shot on goal in this series". Come on now. There is simply no one to whom a team's 6th D failing to record a SOG in 5 games is interesting, in any way. (Now that I've brought it up, wait for it: some time when DiPenta touches the puck in Game 7, Wittman will mention that "he recorded his first shot of the series in Game 6".)

**Selanne was pretty awesome, and yet still a bit snakebitten. The goal that got called back was a beauty. The goal he did score was a nice shot, although Kipper was out of position. And on both 5-on-3's, he had nice chances but fanned just enough to give Kipper a chance to stop them (likewise with Scott Niedermayer; if the Flames had ended up winning that game, those two guys would have been beating themselves up over the missed opportunities).

**Looks to me like Phaneuf has probably shaken off his slump, or whatever you want to call it. There was a nice moment (in the 2nd, I think) where he came around Kipper with the puck and coasted just for an instant. At that moment, when he's playing poorly and/or tentatively, he glides a bit more and chips the puck up. When he's playing well, he accelerates. Last night, he accelerated. He also smoked Todd Fedoruk again -- man that guy has taken some licks.

(Supporting data point: it looks like Sutter is rolling all 6 D again. They had a pretty tight range of ice time last night, from Leopold's 17:40 up to Hamrlik's 22:30.)

**The Flames didn't test Bryzgalov enough. A lot of credit for that goes to the Ducks' skaters, but Jarome should have thrown more than 1 shot on him, and Simon has got to hit the net when he fires it.

**Byron Ritchie has played in all 6 games so far, but if Lundmark (and/or Macdonald) is going to be inserted for Game 7, I don't think Ritchie has done enough this series to hold his spot. Leclerc needs to stay in.

The Flames had their opportunities, but last night, the better team won. Tomorrow, however, is another day.