Will The Calgary Flames Win In Anaheim Ever Again?

#Flames trying to end 27-game losing streak in Anaheim (0-20-7, includes playoffs). Last win at #Ducks: 4/25/06 WCQF. #StanleyCupPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/lZKK9dJzoj

— David Satriano (@davidsatriano) April 14, 2017

The Flames have not beaten the Ducks in Anaheim since they went by "Mighty Ducks", that’s a 26 loss streak.
Via oddsshark pic.twitter.com/28cXGyHlYp

— Lucky Lance Williams (@LuckyLanceWins) March 31, 2017

BREAKING NEWS: They did not end the streak which now holds firm at 28 straight losses in  Anaheim....at least until Game 2 on Saturday night.


I really want to laugh at the Calgary Flames for displaying the type of prolonged futility necessary to render circumstances, personnel changes, the passing of time, the passing of people, and the oft-unpredictable bouncing of the puck completely meaningless whenever they play in Anaheim. Unfortunately, I think this is one of those streaks that's been going on for so long that it's become more eerie than it is funny. Don't get me wrong. I'll still make jokes, but not without the chilling sense that I'm enabling the perverse sense of humor of the hockey gods while I do. 

We are talking about a team that hasn't been able to win in a conference foe's building for well over a decade, and there's literally nothing - other than the Ducks generally being the better team throughout that time frame - that can truly explain it. Hockey fans in Southern California aren't particularly loud or passionate. The team they support isn't some juggernaut that's been steamrolling the entire league since 2006. The Flames have taken the home team to a handful of overtimes and multiple shootouts, and somehow defied the elementary math that says they should have at least won one of those games by accident. Honestly? I am just glad that advanced analytics were about nine years away from become a thing when this streak started, because the stress of trying to figure out this statistical anomaly would have the most persistent mathematician trying to crunch numbers in a straight jacket.

I guess you could call the Honda Center the Calgary Flames' 'House of Horrors', but the scores have been so goddamn close that it feels more like the Calgary Flames' 'House of Implausible Inevitability'. I don't even know if I want this run to continue forever due to the novelty of it, or if I need it to end so that trying to understand it doesn't consume the entirety of my being. One thing I am sure of - however - is that Johnny Gaudreau will be watching the playoffs from home very shortly if he doesn't exercise a Duck-billed demon that's damn near old enough to get mistaken as his elder while  wandering the middle school halls.