Ward takes Flames to task: 'We have to be more desperate'

Geoff Ward publicly criticized his Calgary Flames after they fell 3-2 to the Nashville Predators on Thursday night.

The bench boss implied his squad has lost its identity after it failed to register a shot on goal for the first 12 minutes of the third period and ultimately lost a third straight game.

“I think we’ve got to find it,” he told reporters postgame. “I thought we had it for a while. We’ve got to find it again. We tried to be a scoring team last year. You saw what happened during playoff time. We’ve got to check in now and make sure we get back to our identity because we’re not there now. Collectively, we have to be better, we have to be more desperate, we have to compete harder, and we have to understand what our identity is and we have to start playing to it.”

Thursday's defeat was the Flames' first game without Mark Giordano - who's week-to-week with a hamstring injury - but Ward didn't use the captain's absence as an excuse.

“This isn’t something that just happened tonight (Thursday night),” Ward said.

“We’ve played stretches where we’ve been good. But, consistently, these are the things at playoff time that you have to pay attention to all of the time," he added. "You guys tell me. Look at teams that go on long playoff runs. What stands out about them? We have a decision to make as a team - are we prepared to do it? Because if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to get more of the same. That’s the bottom line.”

Though Calgary currently occupies the second Western Conference wild-card spot, the team has only managed two wins in its last eight contests, both coming by way of shootout.

This is the Flames' first three-game losing streak since Ward took the reins in late November. Calgary reeled off a seven-game win streak to begin his tenure, with the first victory coming two days before Bill Peters resigned.